CONTENTS.
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| Introductory. By Esther Olivia Armstrong | [9] | |
| I., | and Call it Abelard | [10] |
| II.— | Heloise | [14] |
| III.— | The Day of the Funeral | [21] |
| IV.— | The Confession | [28] |
| V.— | Edith Lyle | [36] |
| VI.— | The Beginning of a New Life | [41] |
| VII.— | Eleven Years Later | [44] |
| VIII.— | Mother and Daughter | [51] |
| IX.— | Godfrey Schuyler | [56] |
| X.— | Colonel Schuyler | [68] |
| XI.— | Edith’s Diary | [76] |
| XII.— | Edith and her Mother | [81] |
| XIII.— | Mrs. Barrett’s Lodgers | [84] |
| XIV.— | Colonel Schuyler Returns | [87] |
| XV.— | Edith’s Answer | [92] |
| XVI.— | Breaking the News | [101] |
| XVII.— | The Bridal | [108] |
| XVIII.— | At Oakwood after the Bridal | [114] |
| XIX.— | The Bridal Days | [119] |
| XX.— | On the Sea | [132] |
| XXI.— | The Ladies at Schuyler Hill | [145] |
| XXII.— | The News at Schuyler Hill | [149] |
| XXIII.— | Mrs. Rogers and Gertie at Hampstead | [159] |
| XXIV.— | Mrs. Rogers Gets Work | [172] |
| XXV.— | They Come | [175] |
| XXVI.— | How they Received her | [178] |
| XXVII.— | After Dinner | [189] |
| XXVIII.— | One Day in Hampstead | [198] |
| XXIX.— | The First Sunday in Hampstead | [209] |
| XXX.— | Company at Schuyler Hill | [217] |
| XXXI.— | The Church Sociable | [222] |
| XXXII.— | Mrs. Rogers Speaks her Mind | [230] |
| XXXIII.— | The New Life at the Hill | [234] |
| XXXIV.— | Mary Rogers | [240] |
| XXXV.— | Gertie at the Hill | [246] |
| XXXVI.— | After Four Years | [256] |
| XXXVII.— | The Travellers | [261] |
| XXXVIII.— | Colonel Schuyler Interviews Godfrey | [275] |
| XXXIX.— | Colonel Schuyler Interviews Gertie | [282] |
| XL.— | Robert Macpherson Interviews Gertie | [288] |
| XLI.— | A few Details of that Summer in Hampstead | [293] |
| XLII.— | The Sail on the River | [297] |
| XLIII.— | The Course of Love does not Run Smooth | [304] |
| XLIV.— | Godfrey and Gertie | [307] |
| XLV.— | Robert Macpherson and Colonel Schuyler | [313] |
| XLVI.— | Godfrey and his Father | [315] |
| XLVII.— | Waiting | [318] |
| XLVIII.— | Giving in Marriage | [320] |
| XLIX.— | Mrs. Doctor Barrett | [323] |
| L.— | The Storm Gathering | [330] |
| LI.— | The Storm Bursts | [333] |
| LII.— | The Battle between Life and Death | [343] |
| LIII.— | Colonel Schuyler and the Secret | [348] |
| LIV.— | Husband and Wife | [356] |
| LV.— | The Search in London | [364] |
| LVI.— | Gertie | [372] |
| LVII.— | In New York | [375] |
| LVIII.— | Gertie and the Story | [384] |
| LIX.— | The Story in Hampstead | [391] |
| LX.— | Edith and Gertie | [397] |
| LXI.— | Godfrey and Gertie | [402] |
| LXII.— | The Wedding | [408] |
| LXIII.— | Mary Rogers’ Letter to Edith | [411] |
| LXIV., | and Last | [419] |
EDITH LYLE.
INTRODUCTORY.
BY ESTHER OLIVIA ARMSTRONG.
As I sit here, this bright autumnal morning, and from the window of my room look out upon the river winding its way to the sea, there falls upon my ears the merry chime of bells from the tower of the old gray church,—wedding-bells they are,—and their echoes float across the water, and up the mountain side, and then die away among the wooded cliffs beyond, where the foliage has just been touched with the October frost, and has here and there a gay trimming of scarlet and gold on its summer dress of green. There is a wedding at St. Luke’s to-day, and the bridal party is passing now, and I kiss my hand to the beautiful bride, who flashes a smile at me from those wonderful eyes of hers,—eyes so like in expression to those of the elder lady who sits beside her, and but for whom that wedding at St. Luke’s would never have been. They are gone now from my sight, and only the pealing of the bells is heard in the quiet street, and as I muse upon the strange event which has made the people of our town wild with excitement and curiosity, and of which I, perhaps, know quite as much as any one, I ask myself, “Why not write out the story, suppressing names, and dates, and localities, and give it to the world, as a proof that real life is sometimes stranger than fiction.”
And so, just as the sound of the marriage-bells dies away among the distant hills, I take my pen to begin a tale which will have in it no part of my own life, save as it was sometimes interwoven with the lives of those whose history I write. I am only Esther Armstrong, the village schoolmistress, a plain, old-fashioned woman of thirty-five, with no incident whatever in my life worth recording; and so, with no thought that any one will accuse me of egotism or conceit, I write down
CHAPTER I.,
AND CALL IT ABELARD.
The Schuylers were of Holland descent, and had married and intermarried in England and America, and had in their family a title, it was said, and they boasted of their Dutch blood, and English blood, and American blood, and, like the famous Miss McBride, “were proud of their money and proud of their pride,” and proud to be known as “the Schuylers of New York,” who had for so many years kept themselves free from anything approaching to plebeianism, and whose wealth and importance had been steadily on the increase since the first English Schuyler left his ancestral halls in Lincolnshire across the sea. But the race was gradually dying out, and the only male member of the direct line in America was Colonel Howard, a proud, reticent man, who, a few years before my story opens, had married Miss Emily Rossiter, a lady fully up to the Schuyler standard of moral and social worth.
It was true she brought with her a plain face and a brain not overburdened with ideas, but she added to these the sum of two hundred thousand dollars and an exclusiveness which saw nothing outside her own narrow circle of friends. At the time of her marriage her husband, Colonel Howard Schuyler, who loved the fresh grass and the air from the hills better than brick walls and stony pavements, suggested that they should spend a portion of the summer at his country-seat on the river, but to this the lady would not listen. Hampstead was too quiet. Her elegant laces, and satins, and diamonds, would be sadly out of place in that rustic neighborhood, she thought; and so she went first to Europe, and then, season after season, to Newport and Saratoga, and had a cottage at Nahant, and climbed the White Mountains and the Catskills, and tired herself out in her pursuit of happiness, until, at last, broken in health and spirits, she signified a wish to go to Hampstead, where she could find the rest she needed.
And so one April day Colonel Schuyler came up to our little town with a whole army of workmen, who began at once their task of tearing down and rebuilding the old house, which had belonged to the Schuylers so long, and which latterly had been unoccupied and gradually going to decay. The house, which was very large, stood upon an eminence overlooking the town of Hampstead and the river below, and from this fact the place was known as Schuyler Hill, though for years and years not a Schuyler had lived there or manifested the slightest interest in it. There was a time, however, within my mother’s memory, when all through the summer months high festival had been held at the old place by the Schuylers, whose graves were now in a little inclosure at the summit of the hill, where the tall evergreens were growing, and where the weather-stained headstones were, with their quaint devices and eulogies of people dead long before I was born. Sometimes on a bright summer afternoon I used to climb over the low railing into this yard, to gather the roses and sweet-brier which grew there in such profusion, and, seated on the grass, I would muse upon the dead folk who slept below, and wish so much for a return of the days of which my mother had told me, when the great house was full of high-born people, who made the neighborhood so gay, and whose revellings were sometimes prolonged far into the night.
At last, however, there was a prospect of those days coming back again, and the whole town was alive with wonder and curiosity when it was known that not only was the old house to give way to a new and elegant modern structure, but that the family was really coming there to live a good portion of the year. Hampstead, which had slept so long, was alive now. Property went up, and the people began to talk of a bank, and a new hotel, and sent a petition that the express trains from Albany should stop there, instead of thundering by on the wings of the wind with a snort and a scream, which I thought was tantalizing and impertinent in the extreme. Great, too, was the excitement and interest with regard to the new house, which, under swift and efficient workmen, grew so rapidly that, early in June, the framework of the tower could be seen above the tree-tops, and was watched eagerly by the curious villagers.
“Lady Emily,” as her English maid always called her, came up one day to see the place and give some directions with regard to certain rooms intended expressly for herself, and with her came little Godfrey, her only son, a brown-eyed, sweet-faced boy not quite six years old. I remember just how they looked as they drove through the town in their open barouche, Lady Emily in her jaunty bonnet, which I thought too small and young for her pale, faded face, and little Godfrey in his velvet suit, with his long hair curling on his neck. He was a pleasant, sociable child, and soon made the acquaintance of all the workmen, but was best pleased with Abelard Lyle, the young Englishman who was employed upon the tower, and who at night, when his work was done, made wonderful wagons and carts for the pretty little lad. All day long Godfrey played about the building, and sometimes climbed the highest possible point, and stood watching the men at their work below. Especially was he delighted with the tower where Abelard was; and one morning, the third after his arrival at Hampstead, he mounted to a timber above the young man’s head, where he stood waving his cap and hurrahing to his mother, who was driving leisurely about the grounds in her pony phaeton. She saw him, and with a frantic gesture of her hand motioned him to come down, while Abelard, too, called aloud to him and warned him of his danger. How it happened Godfrey never could explain. He only knew that he stepped backward and fell, that Abelard caught him by the arm and threw him with a desperate effort upon a narrow platform, where he lay unharmed, while his brave deliverer lay on the rubbish far below, a crushed, bleeding thing! Only a thing now,—no life, no motion, no soul, for that had gone to God; and they took the limp, insensible object and laid it upon the grass, which was wet with the blood pouring from the deep wound upon the temple where a sharp stone had struck. Trembling with fear, little Godfrey came down the long ladders and across the piles of boards to the mutilated form upon the grass; and young as he was, he never forgot the look of the pale, dead face upturned to the summer sun.
“Oh father!” he cried, as Colonel Schuyler came up, “he catched me and throwd me onto the board, and tried to hold on himself, but couldn’t; and now he’s dead, and I liked him so much; what shall we do?”
They could do nothing but bear the poor youth to his boarding place near by, where they washed the blood and dirt from his stained face and matted hair, and then began to ask where he came from, and who his relatives were, if he had any. He was an English boy, and had not been long in the country, some one said; but nobody could tell anything definite concerning him or his friends, until there stepped from the crowd an elderly, dignified woman, whom the people recognized as Mrs. Fordham, a comparative stranger to them all. She, too, was English, and she knew the youth who had lost his own life in his efforts to save another. She had known him on the ship, she said. He had come to America in the same vessel with herself a few months before. If they liked, they could take him to her house and bury him from there, as she was the only acquaintance he seemed to have, and he had sometimes called upon her since coming to Hampstead. To this proposition the matron of the boarding-house assented eagerly. A dead body and a funeral were not at all to her taste, and besides she was not sure as to the pay she might receive for her trouble, and she thanked Mrs. Fordham so cordially, and evinced so strong a desire to be rid of her late boarder, that the matter was arranged at once, and Mrs. Fordham started for home to make ready for the dead man, who had been there only the night before, and had left her so full of life, and health, and hope for the untried future.
CHAPTER II.
HELOISE.
Of Mrs. Fordham but little was known in Hampstead at that time. She had only been with us since the first of May, and soon after her coming she had said that if she could not have the best society she would prefer to have none; and as the so-called best society was a little shy of strangers and foreigners, she was left mostly to herself, and was seldom seen except at church, where she was a regular attendant, and where her daughter, a young girl of fifteen or more, attracted much attention by the exceeding beauty of her face, and the delicate refinement of her manner.
Subsequently we learned more of her history, which was as follows:
A native of Berwick, in England, she belonged to what might be called the “higher poor class.” A nursery governess in her girlhood, she had come in constant contact with many high-born ladies who visited in the family of her employer, and whom she watched and imitated until there was in her manner a certain dignity and air of cultivation which marked her as different from others in her own rank of life. Exceedingly ambitious, she refused many an offer which her companions called good, and at the age of thirty was married to Henry Fordham, a poor curate, whose parish was on the Scottish border among the heather hills. Here, after three years of wedded life, she buried him and returned to her lonely home in Berwick, with one only child, a little girl, whom she called Edith Heloise.
As the daughter of a clergyman Edith was a born lady, and Mrs. Fordham felt all her old ambition revive, as she thought what her daughter might one day become,—a titled lady perhaps, and certainly the mistress of some rich man’s home; and to this end she was carefully secluded from the common people around her, and early taught to think that a brilliant future lay before her if she would follow implicitly the instructions of her mother. From a distant relative Mrs. Fordham had received a small annuity, on which she managed to live very comfortably until Edith, or Heloise, as she preferred to call her, was fifteen, when she determined upon emigrating to America, where her daughter’s chances for a high social position were greater than in England.
In the same vessel with her was Abelard Lyle, a young carpenter from Alnwick, who was also going to seek his fortune in the western world. Arrived at New York he found employment at once on Col. Schuyler’s house in Hampstead, whither, at his instigation, Mrs. Fordham removed early in May. She was wanting a cottage in the country, she said, and Abelard found one for her and persuaded her to take it, and attended himself to fitting it up, and stood waiting to welcome her when she came at last to take possession. Mrs. Fordham was very gracious and thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and said he was very good and she should not forget his kind interest in her; and yet there was in her manner something which he understood, and which made him doubly anxious to please and propitiate her. He was well enough as a friend and adviser, and during the voyage and after their arrival in New York, Mrs. Fordham had found it convenient to call upon him for help whenever she pleased, but she always managed to make him feel how immeasurable was the gulf between him and her daughter, whose servant he might be, but nothing more.
Heloise was wondrously beautiful, with an ease and grace about her which would have become a princess. From her father’s side she had inherited “good blood,” a fact which her mother kept constantly before her mind. And as she talked of the brilliant matches which had been made in the new world and could be made again, Heloise listened, at first quietly, with a peculiar look in her eyes and a bright flush on her cheek. Latterly, however, there had been a worried, anxious expression on her face when her mother was talking to her, and on the morning of which I write she had left her coffee untouched and stolen from the room so as not to hear what her mother was saying of Abelard Lyle. He had called upon them the previous night, and stayed too long and seemed too much at home, Mrs. Fordham thought.
“He is a fine young man, I know, and I respect him very much,” she said; “but he is only a carpenter, and I do not think it well to be very intimate with him. I saw you give him a rose. I wouldn’t do it again, or encourage him to come here.”
Mrs. Fordham was talking to herself now, for Heloise was in the garden, with her face turned toward Schuyler Hill, where the men were already at work. She could hear the sound of their hammers, as stroke after stroke fell upon the heavy timbers, and it seemed to her as if there were a low undertone of music in it all, especially in the strokes which rang out from the tall tower rising above the trees. There was a fascination about that tower; and all during the morning, while her mother, who had an errand in the village, was away, Heloise sat by the window, where she could see the square frame and the broad-shouldered figure upon it.
Once, when she felt sure the face was turned toward her, she waved her handkerchief, and was rewarded with a flourish in the air of the right arm, and then she knew that Abelard could see her; and she sat very still, and applied herself to the ruffle she was hemming, and thought such thoughts as made her cheeks the color of the rose she had given to Abelard the previous night.
And while she sat there thus, there was the sound of carriage-wheels, and Lady Emily Schuyler drove slowly down the road with her English maid in attendance. Heloise had seen the lady in church the day before, but instead of staring at her as the others had done, had shrunk from view, and was glad that she sat behind the Schuyler pew instead of in front of it. And now, as the carriage came near, she leaned back in her chair to avoid being seen.
Thus screened from observation, she sat waiting for it to pass, and her heart gave a great thump when she heard it stop directly before the house, while Mrs. Schuyler uttered an exclamation of delight at the roses growing so profusely in the yard.
“Oh, Janette, how lovely those roses are! I must have some for my hair,—they will brighten me up at dinner, and I am looking pale and forlorn, and that vexes Colonel Schuyler so. I wonder if there is any one at home.”
“There must be, for both doors and windows are open. Wait while I see.”
And, suiting the action to the word, the maid, Janette, sprang to the ground, and, opening the gate, walked up to the door of the room where Heloise was sitting.
There was no help for her now. The danger, if danger there was in seeing Mrs. Schuyler, must be met, and Heloise rose at once, and to Janette’s explanation that “Lady Emily would like a few of those lovely roses,” she bowed assent, and went herself to get them.
“It may as well come first as last,” she thought, and, without any covering for her head, she went out into the yard, and, gathering a bunch of the finest flowers, carried them to Mrs. Schuyler, who looked curiously at her, while she expressed her thanks.
Very curiously, too, Heloise looked at her, thinking it would take more than roses to brighten up that sallow, sickly face, and not much wondering that Colonel Schuyler did not like it.
“I don’t believe she remembered me,” she said, as she returned to the house and watched the carriage disappearing from view. “And why should she?” she continued. “She was not at all interested in the matter, and only thought of me as some common girl doing a very foolish thing, I daresay. She looks paler than she did then, and more fretful, too. I wonder if she is happy with all her money?”
And Heloise fell to speculating as to whether she could be happy if she were Mrs. Schuyler and lived in that handsome house on Schuyler Hill. It would be a fine thing, no doubt, to have all the money one wanted, and not to be obliged to turn and fix and mend the Sunday dress until there was but little of the original left; and she tried to fancy herself the mistress of Schuyler Hill, with Colonel Schuyler away and some one else in his place, and her eyes went over the tree-tops to the tall tower and the figure working there.
“Better as it is,” she thought, and leaning back in her chair she went off into a pleasant kind of reverie, from which she was roused by the sound of horse’s feet, galloping swiftly down the road as if on an errand of life or death.
The rider was one of the men from Schuyler Hill, and swiftly as he rode Heloise detected a look of terror on his face and wondered what had happened.
Involuntarily she glanced again toward the tower, and missed the form she had seen there a short time before. But there was nothing strange in that. She often missed him when he went down for nails or orders from his overseer, and she thought no more of it until an hour later, when her mother came up the walk, looking very red and disturbed, and asking, abruptly:
“Have you heard of the dreadful accident at the Hill?”
Heloise never could explain why it was that she seemed intuitively to know that the accident had reference to the only one through whom she could be deeply touched. But she did know it, and her lips were pale as ashes, and trembled in a grieved kind of way as she said: “It is Abelard.”
“Yes; who told you?” her mother asked.
And Heloise replied:
“No one told me. I knew without telling. Is he much hurt? Where is he?”
And she caught her bonnet from the nail and started for the door.
“Stop, child. Where are you going?” Mrs. Fordham said.
And Heloise replied:
“Going to Abelard. Didn’t you tell me he was hurt?”
“Yes; but,—Heloise”—and Mrs. Fordham hesitated a little, frightened by the expression on her daughter’s face, “you must not go. There is no need; he will be here soon. I told them to bring him, as we are the only friends he has, and I hurried home to get the front room ready. Abelard is dead; he fell from the tower and was killed; there they are now.”
And pointing to the group of men coming slowly down the road, Mrs. Fordham hastened to open her best room, and did not see the look of unutterable anguish and horror which came into her daughter’s face when she heard the news.
Heloise did not faint, but she uttered a low, gasping cry, and held fast to the back of a chair, while everything turned dark about her, and she was conscious of nothing except that in the yard there was the tramp of feet as the men came up the walk, bearing the body of him who had left her only the night before, full of life and health. Then she started, and fleeing up the stairs to her own room, threw herself upon the bed, where she lay listening to the sounds below, and trying to realize the full extent of the horror which had come upon her. At last when all was quiet, and the men were gone, she crept to the window and looked out upon the day, which had seemed so bright to her in the early morning, but was so dark and dreary now.
Colonel Schuyler himself was just going through the gate, so occupied with his own thoughts that he nearly stumbled over a little girl who was coming into the yard, and in whom Heloise recognized Phebe Young, the daughter of the woman with whom Abelard had boarded. Heloise was not afraid of Phebe, but she drew back from the window till Colonel Schuyler was out of sight, feeling as if she almost hated him for having built the house where Abelard lost his life.
There was a knock at the door, and ere Heloise could answer it little Phebe Young came in. She had caught a glimpse of Heloise at the window, and thinking it no harm, had come straight up to her room.
“Please, miss,” she said, laying a paper on the young girl’s lap, “we found this under his jacket pinned tight, and ma knew most it comed from your rose bush, for there hain’t no more like it in Hampstead, and she sent it to you, cause she guesses you liked him some.”
It was the rose Heloise had picked for Abelard and fastened in his buttonhole the night before, when they stood for a moment by the gate, and he told her to watch for him on the morrow as he was to work upon the tower. Now he was dead, and the rose, which had been so fresh and dewy then, was wilted and crushed, and right in the centre, upon the pure white petals, was a little drop of blood, or rather the stain of one. Abelard’s blood, Heloise knew, and she felt a strange sickness steal over her as she held the faded flower in her hand and gazed upon that bright red spot, the sight of which seemed to stamp a similar mark upon her heart, which ached and throbbed with a new pain.
“Yes, Phebe, thank you; it was kind in your mother; and now, please go; my head is aching badly,” she said; and motioning Phebe from the room, she thrust the blood-stained rose into her bosom and went again to her bed, where she lay until her mother came to see what she was doing.
There were no tears on Heloise’s cheeks, no trace of them in her eyes, but her white face told volumes to Mrs. Fordham, who laid her hand on her daughter’s hair, saying, kindly:
“I never knew you cared so much for him. Poor boy, I am so sorry. He looks very natural. Would you like to see him?”
“No, mother, not now,” was the answer, and that was all that passed between them on the subject of Abelard that day.
Heloise was very sick with headache and kept her room, and at night her mother brought her toast and tea, and tried to make her eat, and told her how kind the Schuylers were, and what a sweet little boy Godfrey was, and how badly he felt at Abelard’s death. He had been to see the body, and his mother had been there, too, and Mrs. Fordham dwelt upon her fine manners and handsome dress, and Godfrey’s velvet suit and manly face, until Heloise felt as if she should go mad, and begged her mother to leave her.
She hated the Schuylers one and all, for through them Abelard had met his death, and she did not dare look into the future or question what it had in store for her. She only felt that all the brightness of her life had been suddenly stricken out, leaving her utterly hopeless and desolate, and long after her mother was asleep in the next room she lay awake wondering what she should do, and if, as she feared, it would be necessary for her to tell. And even if it were not necessary, was it right for her to withhold the secret which was torturing her so cruelly? Was it just to Abelard, and did it not look as if she were ashamed of the past as connected with him?
“I am not, darling, I am not!” she moaned; “and to-morrow, when they lower you into the grave, I will be there, and, in a voice everybody can hear, I’ll tell the truth, and face the entire world, mother and all.”
The facing mother was the hardest part of all, and Heloise felt her pulse quicken and her head throb violently as she fancied her mother’s look of surprise and anger when she heard the story which she meant to tell at the grave, and, while thinking how she should combat that anger and reproach, the early summer morning crept into her room, and she heard the watchers with the dead go through the yard into the street, and knew that another day had come.
CHAPTER III.
THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.
There was a great crowd out to attend the funeral of Abelard Lyle, and, long before the hour appointed for the services, Mrs. Fordham’s cottage was filled to overflowing, as were also the yard and street in front, and it was with some difficulty the Schuyler family could make their way through the dense mass of people.
They came late, and little Godfrey had a knot of crape upon his arm, while Mrs. Schuyler wore a black silk, with no shade of color to relieve her sallow face, and she looked, with her high-bred city air, very much out of place, and very much bored, too, as if she wished it well over, and wondered why her husband should take so much trouble for a poor young man, and an entire stranger. And yet Lady Emily was not without kindly feelings, and she felt very grateful to Abelard Lyle, and very sorry that he should have lost his life in saving that of her son; and, at her husband’s suggestion, she had been to the cottage the day before to see that everything was right, and had spoken civilly to Mrs. Fordham, and asked for some more roses, saying:
“I have had some once to-day. I was driving by just before the terrible accident, and saw such a lovely young girl,—your daughter, I suppose?”
“Yes, my daughter,” Mrs. Fordham replied, a new hope rising within her that through the Schuylers Heloise might make her way to distinction.
Heloise had a headache, she said, else she would like so much for Mrs. Schuyler to see her, and she thanked her for speaking so kindly of her, and hoped she would call again when the funeral was over.
To all this Lady Emily pretended to listen and nod assent, and, when she had all the roses she cared for, she said good-morning, and went back to the hotel, where she recounted the particulars of her call to the English maid, with whom she was on very familiar terms.
“Such assurance,” she said, “as that woman has! Why, she talked to me as if I were her equal, and even asked me to call again. She wanted me to see her daughter,—that beautiful young girl whom we saw in our drive this morning. Did I tell you that is where they have taken the young man? I should not be surprised if he were the lover of the girl, only she looked so very young. It seems to me I must have seen her before.”
The appearance of Colonel Schuyler brought to an end the lady’s conversation with Janette, and turning to her husband, she asked where they were intending to bury the young man.
“In our own family lot,” was the reply; and then Lady Emily dropped the flowers she was arranging, and her eyes opened wider than their wont, and fixed themselves upon her husband with a look of incredulity as she said: “Why, Howard, you must be crazy! Surely there are places enough without putting him there.”
“Yes, I know; but, Emily, consider for a moment,—he saved our boy’s life, and I feel like paying him every possible respect, and have ordered his grave to be made just under the pine tree at the far side of the lot. There is room enough between for all the Schuylers who will ever be buried there.”
Lady Emily knew from experience that when her husband’s mind was made up, it was useless to argue with him, so she said no more, but thought within herself that when her time came to die, she would request that her aristocratic flesh be laid in Greenwood beside the Rossiters, and not on Schuyler Hill, in that little yard where a few gray, time-worn stones marked the last resting-place of such of the Schuylers as were buried there, and where Abelard Lyle was to be taken. Colonel Schuyler was in one sense as proud as his wife, but with his pride he had much good sense and genuine kindness of heart. But for Abelard Lyle he would have lost his bright-faced boy, and he felt truly grateful to the young man, and resolved to show him every possible respect. So he ordered the funeral himself, and sent to the cottage a handsome rosewood coffin, and was in and out several times to see that all was right, and when the hour for the services arrived, drove down with his wife and son, and enacted the part of chief, and, indeed, only mourner, for Abelard had no relatives, and Mrs. Fordham was too much afraid of being identified with “that class of people” to admit of any great manifestation of feeling on her part. For the sake of the mother country, and because he had been kind to her on the ship, she had allowed the body to be brought to her house, but she managed to impress every one with the great distance there was between herself and the dead man, who looked so calm and peaceful, and handsome in his elegant coffin, with a half-opened rose upon his breast. Mrs. Fordham had put it there at Heloise’s request; but Heloise herself had taken no part in anything, or even seen the body. She had abandoned the idea of going to the grave and startling the people with her story, as she had meant to do the previous day. The pain in her head was too great to admit of her sitting up, and during the entire day she never once appeared below, but lay on the bed in her chamber, with her aching head buried in the pillow, and the faded, blood-stained rose hidden away in her bosom. She heard the people as they assembled in the house and yard below, and knew when the Schuylers came by the suppressed hush among the crowd. She heard, too, the clergyman’s voice as he read the burial service, and when they carried the body out she arose from her bed and through the half-closed shutters watched the funeral procession as it moved up the road, to the top of Schuyler Hill, where the open grave was waiting for all that was mortal of Abelard Lyle. Heloise could not pray then, her heart was so hard and rebellious, and ached so with a sense of actual pain, and loss, and a horrid fear of what might be in the future; and once when this fear got the mastery of her she arose, and going to her private drawer, where she kept her hidden treasures, took from it a box, in which she sought for and found, as she supposed, the instrument which was to help her in the hour of need, when she told the world what she must ere long tell. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and felt herself grow cold and faint, when she saw that instead of the article which was to prove her innocent and pure, she held only a receipt for goods bought and paid for by her mother in New York. Search as she might, she could not find the document she sought. That was gone, how or where she could not guess until she remembered having burned some waste papers accumulating in her drawer, only a few days before. She had it then and read it over, and supposed she laid it back in the box where she always kept it, but she must have put in its place the receipt which was folded and looked much like it, and burned the only evidence she had that she was not the wicked thing she felt herself to be as she sank upon the floor and wished that she could die. It was terrible to see such grief in one so young, for Heloise, though well grown and tall, was little more than fifteen, and her face when in repose was the face of a child. But it seemed old now, and gray, and pinched with that look of anguish upon it, mingled with something akin to shame, as she crouched upon the floor and whispered to herself:
“What if mother and the world do not believe me?” Then swift as thought the answer came: “I’ll drown myself in the river;” and sitting upright upon the floor, the young girl went through in fancy with all the sickening details which such a catastrophe would involve. The anxiety of the mother, the alarm, the search for her body, the finding it at last, and the coroner’s inquest, where possibly her secret would be discovered and she be disgraced all the same.
“No, no,” she moaned, “better live and fight it out, knowing I am innocent, than carry a sullied name to a suicide’s grave.”
“And lose your soul,” something whispered in her ear, making her start with a new horror as she remembered the hereafter she had in her madness almost forgotten.
Falling upon her knees, she sobbed, “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.”
That was all she could say, but Jesus knew what she meant,—knew that she wanted help, and He helped her as He always does when asked aright, and her heart ceased to throb so painfully, and the hard look left her face, and the tears came to her relief as she said:
“I know I am innocent, and so does God; and I’ll tell mother the truth, keeping nothing back.”
Heloise had risen now, and with trembling hands was binding up her beautiful hair of golden brown, which Abelard had admired so much, and which she, too, knew was wonderful for its brightness and luxuriance. Would she ever care for it again? she asked herself, as she put it away under a net where not even a single curl could find its way to neck or brow, when suddenly, as if it had been a vision, she saw an elegant room which seemed to be at Schuyler Hill, and in that room a lady of marvellous beauty, with a face like her own, save that it was older and more mature,—a lady, clad in satin and lace, with jewels in her flowing hair and on her snowy neck, and to herself she said:
“That’s I. How came I there?”
Then the mist, if mist it was, which had for a moment clouded her mind, lifted, and she was herself again,—Heloise Fordham, standing in her own humble room and making herself ready for the meeting with her mother, and the confession she meant to make before she slept again.
I was at the funeral and saw Abelard in his coffin, and thought how dreadful it was to die so far from home and have no tears shed for me, for there were none shed for him. Everybody looked sorry, and sober, and shocked, Colonel Schuyler particularly so, and Lady Emily put her fine cambric handkerchief to her eyes when the rector spoke of the noble deed which never could be forgotten by those for whom it was done; but she did not cry, I know, for I was watching her, and I wanted to shake little Godfrey, who, though he was very subdued and quiet, actually nodded in his high chair before the remarks were over.
It was a sad funeral and a big funeral, but one void of genuine heartache, save as one young heart upstairs was breaking, and of this I did not then know.
Although more than two years the junior of Heloise, I perhaps knew her better than any one else. Intimate friends she had not, but between her and myself an acquaintance had sprung up, born of our common love for flowers and rambles by the river side. We had exchanged slips of roses and geraniums, and talked over the gate of our flower-beds, and once, when caught in a rain-storm, she had taken tea with us and delighted us all with her pretty, ladylike manners and soft, gentle speech. I was charmed with her, and having, as I believed, a secret of hers in my possession, I felt greatly interested in her, and when at the funeral I missed her and heard of the sick headache which was keeping her upstairs, I had my own private opinion with regard to the cause of that headache, and with all the curiosity of a girl of thirteen, determined upon seeing her and judging for myself how a girl looked who had lost her lover. Accordingly I lingered after the funeral, and when the people were gone and I had taken several turns in the garden I ventured up the stairs to her room and knocked softly at her door.
“Come in,” was spoken in a frightened tone, and I went in and found her standing in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her head and her eyes fixed upon the door with an expression of alarm.
At sight of me, however, they changed at once, and with a smile she said:
“Oh, it’s you. I thought it was mother.”
“No, she hasn’t had time to come back yet,” I replied; and then, touched by the look of her white face, I burst out: “Oh, Heloise, isn’t it terrible, and he so young and handsome? I am so sorry for you.”
“Hush-sh,” she said, in a tone of alarm. “Why are you sorry for me? Why should any one be more sorry for me than for another?”
She was gazing fixedly at me, and, impelled by something I could not or did not try to resist, I replied:
“Because,—because I guess he was your beau.”
Heloise’s eyes were almost black now in her excitement, and her voice was husky as she said:
“You guess he was my beau! Why do you guess so? What business have you to guess so? Tell me, child.”
She seemed many years my senior then, and in obedience to her question I answered:
“I’ve seen him look at you just as brother Tom looks at Samantha Blackmer, and he’s her beau; and then I saw him kiss you once down by the river, that time I came upon you suddenly, you remember; but I never told. He was your beau, wasn’t he?”
She did not answer for a moment but her lips moved as if she were trying to speak, and at last she said:
“No, he was not my beau, Ettie (that was my pet name twenty years ago, before I was the village schoolmistress)—Ettie, I believe you like me, and I want—I want—you—to,—oh, Ettie, if ever people say bad things of me don’t you believe them, but stand by me, won’t you?”
She had both my hands in hers, and was looking straight into my eyes with an expression which half-frightened me out of my wits, as I told her I would stand by her, without, however, knowing at all what she meant. I was a little proud to be thus appealed to, and when the fixed expression of her face gave way and the tears began to roll down her cheeks, I cried too from sympathy and tried to comfort her and made her lie down upon her bed, and when she was more quiet sat by her until I heard her mother’s step below. Then I took my leave, for I was afraid of Mrs. Fordham, whom I met on the stairs, and whose face I fancied looked brighter and more cheerful than faces usually do when returning from a grave.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONFESSION.
“Heloise,” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, as she entered her daughter’s room. “What is the matter? You look as if you had been sick for years. Can it be you loved him so much?”
“Yes, mother; more than you can guess. I’ll tell you about it by and by; to-night, maybe, when I feel stronger. I can’t talk now.”
“Would you like me to tell you how well everything passed off at the grave, and how thoughtful Col. Schuyler was?” Mrs. Fordham continued, and Heloise replied:
“No, mother, not a word, now nor ever. I can’t bear it. I almost hate the Schuylers, and I wish I, too, was dead.”
It was not often that Heloise was thus moved, and her mother looked at her curiously, but she said no more of the Schuylers or Abelard, and busied herself with putting the cottage to rights and preparing a tempting little supper for her daughter. But Heloise could not eat, and after the supper was cleared away and her mother had taken her usual seat upon the back porch, she crept to her side, and putting her head in her lap, said entreatingly:
“Mother, I have something to tell you which will surprise and probably offend you. I ought to have told it before, but I was afraid and kept putting it off. It was wrong, I know, but it cannot now be helped. Abelard and I were married!”
“You married to Abelard Lyle!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, starting back as if a serpent had stung her.
She did not say, “I am glad then that he is dead,” but she thought it, and the thought must have communicated itself to Heloise, for she lifted up her head and looked reproachfully in her mother’s face, while her lip quivered in a grieved kind of way, but she did not cry, and her voice was steady as she said:
“Oh, mother, don’t speak so to me, as if marrying him was the most disgraceful thing I could do. I loved him so much, and he loved me. It was during the long voyage when I saw so much of him. You know you were sick most of the time, and that left me to him, and he was so kind, and before we reached New York I promised to be his wife some time, and meant to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
The tone was harsh and unrelenting in which Mrs. Fordham put this question, and Heloise flushed a little and answered, hurriedly:
“It was wrong, I know, but you are, you were,—forgive me, mother,—you are prouder, more ambitious than I am. You think I might marry a nobleman, and I shrank from telling you for fear you would separate us and that time you went to Hoboken and stayed a week with your friend, Abelard persuaded me to be married. We could keep it a secret, he said, until he had something beforehand and was in a better position.”
“Umph! As if he could rise to a better position. Child, with your face and manner you might be the first lady in the land, instead of throwing yourself away on a poor carpenter.”
Mrs. Fordham spoke very bitterly, and her eyes had in them a hard, angry look, which roused all the temper there was in the young girl, who answered, hotly:
“Abelard’s profession was an honorable one. Joseph was a carpenter. Abelard was not to blame for being poor; one of his sisters married into as good a family as there is in Scotland, and had he lived he would have risen above poverty and obscurity. America has many avenues for such as he, and I should one day have been so proud of him. Oh, my darling, my husband!”
The temper was all gone now, and the girl’s voice was like a wailing sob as she uttered the name, “My husband,” but it did not touch the mother’s heart or make her one whit sorry for her child.
“Where was it? I mean who married you?” she asked; and Heloise replied:
“A Mr. Calvert, in New York.”
“A dissenter?” was the next question; and Heloise answered:
“Yes, I believe so; Abelard did not care who it was, so we were married, and he looked in the Directory and found the name of the Rev. Charles Calvert, and persuaded me to go there. I think he was not preaching anywhere, but he could marry us the same, and he did.”
“Without any reference or asking you any questions?” Mrs. Fordham said, and Heloise hesitated a little.
She did not like to tell that Abelard had represented her as alone in this country, and had given that as a reason for marrying so young; so she evaded the question, and answered:
“The minister was satisfied, only he said I seemed like a child; and one of the ladies present said so, too, and asked how old I was. Abelard told her, ‘older than I looked,’ and that was all they said.”
Heloise paused a moment, and then went on:
“I have heard since that Mr. Calvert was a half brother of Mrs. Schuyler, who was in the room when we were married, and had little Godfrey with her.”
“Mrs. Schuyler saw you married!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed. “The matter grows worse and worse. Now that Abelard is dead, I hoped it might not be known. You have seen her since,—do you think she recognized you?”
“I know she did not. She could not have seen me distinctly that night in New York. She was sick, I think; at all events, she lay upon a couch, and did not get up at all. I know it was Mrs. Schuyler, because the other lady, Mrs. Calvert, called her Emily, and the little boy told Abelard his name was Godfrey Schuyler.”
“Have you a certificate of the marriage?” was Mrs. Fordham’s next question, and her daughter replied:
“I did have, and kept it in a box Abelard gave me, but I’ve lost it. I had it out the other day with some other papers, and thought I put it back, but must have burned it and substituted for it a receipt which looked like it. Oh, mother! will people think I never was married at all, when they know it?”
The girl was crouching at her mother’s feet in such an agony of shame and fear that at first she hardly heard what her mother was saying about there being no need for people to know of the marriage.
“Godfrey is too young to remember it, or he would have recognized Abelard,” Mrs. Fordham said; “and it is not likely the two ladies thought enough of you to keep you in mind a week. There is nothing but Abelard’s peculiar name to make any impression. They might remember that.”
“No, mother.” And Heloise lifted her head quickly. “His first name was James, and as he liked that the best, he called himself ‘James A. Lyle,’ and it was so written in the certificate.”
“Then it never need be known that you made this low marriage!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, in a tone of intense relief.
“Mother!”—and starting up from her crouching posture, Heloise’s eyes flashed indignantly as she said,—“do you think I am ashamed of my love for Abelard, or that I will consent to act a lie all my life, even if I could do so without detection, which I cannot, for, mother, I have not told you all; the dreadful part is to come. I—I—oh! I can’t speak it. You must know what I mean.”
Heloise was at her mother’s feet again, her hands clasped together nervously, and her breath coming in quick, panting gasps, as she whispered the dreadful thing she had to tell, and then fell forward on her face, fainting entirely away.
For an instant Mrs. Fordham sat like one stunned by a heavy blow, powerless to move or speak; but her ever-active, far-seeing mind was busy, and before she stooped to raise her unconscious daughter, she had come to a decision.
All her hopes for the future should not be thus blasted. Her daughter should yet ride in the high places of the land, and should never be known to the world as the widow of a carpenter. She repeated the last words sneeringly, and then lifting up her child bore her to the window, where the cool evening air could blow upon her. It was not long ere Heloise came back to consciousness, but her face still wore the same white, frightened look it had put on when she whispered her secret. Ere long, however, the pallid hue changed to a scarlet flush as she listened to her mother’s plan, and her fixed purpose to carry it out. They were to leave Hampstead at once and go back to England, where in London they would for a time live in obscurity, unknown to any one save those with whom they were compelled to come in contact.
“Nobody here will believe in your marriage,” she said, as she saw Heloise about to speak, and guessed that it was to oppose her. “Your certificate is lost.”
“Yes, but Mr. Calvert must have a record; he would remember,” Heloise said, faintly; and her mother replied: “Possibly; but I do not care to have him remember. I do not wish your marriage known, and it shall not be. Hear me, Heloise, it shall not be, I say.”
“But I cannot live a lie,” the poor girl moaned, as she rocked to and fro, with her head bent down, and her whole attitude one of great mental distress.
“You forget that you have been living a lie these three months past. It is rather late now to make it a matter of conscience, and I shall not listen to such foolishness. So far as this you may be truthful. In England you may take his name. Lyle is better than Fordham, and for a time you must of course pass for a married woman; after that,—I have not decided.”
There was a hard, implacable expression in Mrs. Fordham’s face as she said this, and she looked at that moment as if capable of almost anything which would promote her own ends. Though kind and affectionate in the main she had always kept her daughter in a state of rigid obedience, if not subjection to her will, and she had no idea of being thwarted now. Heloise, who understood her so well and knew how useless it was to contend with so strong and fierce a spirit, felt herself powerless to oppose anything, and thus gave a tacit consent at least to her mother’s plans. For two or three days, however, she kept her room, and did not go down when Mrs. Schuyler came with little Godfrey, and asked for more of the “lovely roses.”
There was nothing said of Abelard. Lady Emily had forgotten him, and had no thought or care for the young girl watching her from the window as she flitted about the rosebush, in her dainty white morning dress, with its lace and fluted ruffles. She was not pretty at all, but her movements were very graceful, and she made a pleasant picture in the little yard, and Heloise half envied her as she thought how blessed she was in home, and husband, and children she was not ashamed to own. She was waiting now, it seemed, for the colonel, who was to take her for a drive, and who soon came down the road, and stopping before the gate asked Mrs. Fordham to come to him for a moment.
He intended raising a monument to the memory of Abelard Lyle, he said, and he would like to inquire his age, place of birth, and if he had another name than Abelard. Mrs. Fordham was sorry she could not give the desired information. Indeed, people were laboring under a misapprehension with regard to herself and the young man. He was a mere ship acquaintance, but she believed he had a mother and possibly a sister. She had never liked this country much, and was intending to return to England very soon, where she would find his friends or communicate with them in some way. Colonel Schuyler was very kind to be so much interested in the young man. She had liked him, too, so far as she knew him, but she had only done for him what she would do for any of her countrymen under similar circumstances.
Mrs. Fordham spoke loftily and decidedly, and Colonel Schuyler looked at her a little curiously as he said:
“Ah, indeed! I am sorry you don’t know his age, though it does not matter much. I wish you good-morning, madam.”
He lifted his hat and was turning away, when from the upper window there came a clear, ringing voice, which said:
“Colonel Schuyler, I can tell you what you wish to know. He was born in Alnwick, England; he was twenty-three last March, and his first name was James.”
“Thanks,” and Colonel Schuyler started in surprise, both at the voice and the beautiful young face, which looked so eagerly at him for an instant and then was withdrawn from sight.
“That was a most remarkable face, Emily. Do you know who the young girl is?” Colonel Schuyler asked, as he drove off with his wife.
Mrs. Schuyler believed it was the daughter of that woman, and she guessed she was rather pretty, though she did not notice her particularly.
“That class of people do sometimes produce very fine complexions and tolerably good features.”
That was the lady’s reply, and then she talked of something else, and forgot Heloise entirely. But that night, strangely enough, the colonel dreamed of that window in the cottage round which a honeysuckle was trained, and of a pale, sweet face framed in the net-work of green, and the clear, hazel eyes, which for a moment had looked at him. And, when he woke, he was conscious of a feeling of interest in the young girl, and resolved to make some inquiries concerning her. But the next day he went down to New York to order the monument for Abelard’s grave; and when, after an absence of two weeks, he returned to Hampstead, the cottage was shut up, and he learned that Mrs. Fordham had gone to England and taken her daughter with her.
Remembering what Mrs. Fordham had said to him when he went to make some inquiries concerning Abelard Lyle, he was not as much surprised as the villagers had been when they heard of Mrs. Fordham’s intention to give up her pretty cottage and return to her friends. She laid great stress upon her friends, and hinted broadly that the people of Hampstead were not to her taste. Nobody cared especially, though many wondered at her fickleness in changing her residence so soon. I was sorry, for I liked Heloise and hated to part with her. Remembering what she had said to me of the dreadful thing which might happen to her, and to which my championship was pledged, I felt disappointed not to have a chance of proving myself her friend, and I told her so when I went to say good-by, and found her in the little room where I had seen her on the day of the funeral. Her eyes were almost black, and there was a peculiar expression in them as she regarded me fixedly for a moment without speaking.
“Ettie,” she said at last, “I deceived you the other day. I told you Abelard was not my beau, and that—that was not quite the truth, for though he was not what you meant, he was—, I liked him, oh so much, and he liked me, and—and—oh, Ettie, I am very, very miserable.”
She was sobbing piteously, and I could only smooth her hair by way of comfort as I did not know what to say.
“Ettie,” she began again, when she had dried her eyes, “they say Colonel Schuyler is fixing up the grave and will put a grand monument there. I am thankful to him for that, but after a time he will forget all about it, and grass and weeds will grow where only flowers should be. Ettie, you like me, I think, and will you, for my sake, keep his grave up nice and pretty, and put fresh flowers there in the summer time? Put them in this vase; I give it to you for that; he bought it for me in New York.”
She placed in my hand a small vase of creamy white, with a band of gold around it, and on its side a bunch of blue forget-me-nots, in the centre of which were two hearts transfixed with a golden arrow.
“It will make me happy to know this is on his grave when I am so far away,” she added; “and, Ettie, don’t tell any one, but last night, when everybody was asleep, I went there and planted a little rosebush like that tree in the garden, you know. I am sure it will live, for it had a good root, and I want you to water it and nurse it to life, and when they put up the stone don’t let them trample it down. Will you do this for me?”
I promised that I would, and she went on:
“Some time when I am older and have money I shall come back to see his grave. You’ll have it nice for me, won’t you?”
I promised her again, and then, taking the scissors from the table, she cut from the back of her head one of her long, bright curls, and laying it in my hands bade me keep it as a remembrance of her.
“Mother is coming and you must go,” she said, with a little shiver, as we heard Mrs. Fordham’s voice below, and with a hurried kiss and the whispered words, “Remember about the grave, good-by, I shall see you again some time, and possibly write to you,” she pushed me toward the door, and when I saw her again she was waving her hand to me from the window of the car which took her away from Hampstead.
CHAPTER V.
EDITH LYLE.
It was a dark, dreary, January afternoon, and the dreariness and darkness were increased by the dense fog which since noon had settled like a pall over the great city of London, and by a pitiless rain, which, mixing with melting snow, ran in muddy puddles down the gutters and in dirty streams down the windows of the third floor back room of the lodging in Dorset Street, where a very young girl was lying. Her face was whiter than the pillow against which it lay, and in the eyes there was a look of utter helplessness, as if all life, and hope, and energy had been crushed out, and there was nothing left but apathy and utter indifference to the future. And yet this was the same face which Colonel Schuyler had seen framed in a net-work of green, and of whose bright beauty he had dreamed, with his lady wife beside him: but he would not have known it now. Months of mental anguish and continual combat with the mother’s stronger nature, added to days of intense suffering, and homesickness, and longing for the dead in that far-off grave in Hampstead, had left their marks on the young girl, until now that the crisis was past she lay quiet and passive in her mother’s hands and seemed to assent to whatever the mother proposed.
That estimable woman had chosen lodgings in Dorset Street, knowing she would be safe there from any one whom her daughter might meet in the future. The name Heloise had been dropped, and she was Edith Lyle now, a young widow, whose husband had died soon after her marriage, and so no suspicions were excited and no comments made by the few who occasionally saw her stealing up or down the stairs which led to her apartment. Only the housemaid, Mary Stover, was interested in her, or paid much heed to her extreme youth and beauty. And even Mary but seldom came in contact with her, so that Edith hardly knew of her existence, or how much she was in the serving woman’s thoughts. Since the birth of her baby, a wee little creature, with masses of golden hair and a look in its blue eyes of the dead, Edith had scarcely thought of anything, but had lain with the child held closely to her bosom, as if fearful of losing it. Baby was now four weeks old, and the impatient Mrs. Fordham could wait no longer, and on the dreary day of which I write she sat by her daughter’s side and said to her, in the tone which Edith had never yet had courage to withstand:
“Edith, you are strong enough now to leave this wretched place. Baby will be four weeks old to-morrow, and I have everything arranged. I have made particular inquiries about the —— Street Foundling Hospital, and learned that in no other place are the children so well cared for. The matron and nurses are very kind, and the little ones healthy and happy, and in nine cases out of ten are adopted by good families and grow up respectable men and women.”
“But, mother,” Edith gasped, while her hold tightened on the little pink fingers which lay on her neck, “I cannot let her go. She is mine,—truly, lawfully mine,—and you shall not take her from me.”
“Hush, child, you do not know what you are talking about,” came impatiently from Mrs. Fordham’s lips. “I tell you we cannot be hampered with a child, and it shall be as I say. I know it will be well cared for. I shall keep sight of her, and see that no harm befalls her, and if you ever should wish to claim it, that mark on its bosom is sufficient to identify it.”
At the mention of the peculiar birthmark on her child, Edith moaned faintly, and thought of the white rose with the blood stain in the centre, and the awful day when it was brought back to her, and she had laid it next her breaking heart. There was a blood-red spot over baby’s heart, and Edith knew how it came there, and shuddered and grew sick as she remembered it, and held tighter to the little one whom her mother would wrest from her. At last, wearied with the controversy which was exciting her daughter so much, Mrs. Fordham seemed to give up the contest, but it was only seeming. She was one who never gave up, and what she could not accomplish by fair means she was not too scrupulous to attain by foul. Baby must go. It was something in her way, and must be sacrificed; so, when the hour came round for her daughter’s medicine, she mixed with it one of the sedative powders which Edith had taken for wakefulness when her illness was at the worst. As it had been successful then so it was now, and she ere long fell into a heavy sleep, which Mrs. Fordham knew from experience would last for several hours. This was her time for action, and going to the bed she stooped to take the child from the arms which held it so fast. Even in her sleep Edith must have had a dim consciousness of the threatened danger, for she held firmly to the little one, while her white lips moaned:
“No, she is mine; you cannot have her.”
But for this Mrs. Fordham did not hesitate, and with a firm hand she carefully unclasped the clinging arms and lifted the child from the bed.
Had it been a gentleman’s offspring, and Edith the mistress of some luxurious home, she might have felt some love and tenderness for the little creature, which, roused from its sleep, opened its blue eyes and looked into her face. But it was lowly born, a descendant of the Lyles, who lived in obscurity among the heather hills of Alnwick, and she steeled her heart against it, and never faltered in her purpose, even when the pretty lips parted and gave forth a sound, which made Edith start and half turn upon her pillow as if about to waken. But the sedative was good, and the young girl slept on, while her mother robed the little one in its best attire, and wrote upon a bit of paper which she pinned upon its bosom:
“Her name is Heloise, and she is not a child of shame, but of an imprudent marriage, and inherits from her mother, who is a lady, some of the best blood in England.”
“That will save her from a life of servitude; the high bloods always take such children as these,” she said, “and it will be much better so than a drag on us.”
Ten minutes later and she stole softly down the stairs, bearing under her cloak a bundle which, when she retraced her steps, was not with her. But it was safe from the chill air of the night, for she had rung the bell of —— Street Hospital, and depositing her burden on the steps had retreated swiftly behind a clump of shrubbery until she saw the door opened and the child received into the warmth and light within. The rain had ceased and the fog had cleared away with the going down of the sun, but no one could have recognized her in the dim starlight, with the hood of her water-proof drawn closely over her head, and when she reached the house in Dorset Street she felt as if cut loose from everything which could in any way interfere with her ambitious projects.
Edith had slept soundly, and when at last her mother came and stood beside the bed she lay in the same deep slumber, with a bright flush on her cheeks and her arm still stretched over the spot where but an hour ago a little pink-and-white baby lay. It was gone now, but she did not know it, or dream of the anguish in store for her when she should rouse from the sleep which lasted until near midnight. Then with a sudden start and sense of danger she woke, and sitting up in bed felt for her child under the sheet,—on the pillow,—under the pillow,—on the counterpane,—everywhere, but all in vain. Baby was gone, and in a voice husky with fright and terror she called to the figure sitting so motionless by the fire, “Mother, mother, where is baby? Is she in your lap, mother?” and, alarmed at Mrs. Fordham’s ominous silence, Edith sprang to her side, and with a sensation as if her heart was bursting from her throat, gasped out:
“Mother, tell me;—what have you done with my child?”
And Mrs. Fordham did tell her, while Edith listened like one paralyzed beyond the power to move. Speak she could not at first, for a horrible suffocating sensation in her throat; but her face was deadly pale and her lips quivered, while the fury of a tigress when bereft of its young glared from her eyes. At last she found her voice, and the words rang through the room with terrible distinctness.
“Mother, may God’s curse fall on you, if a hair of baby’s head is harmed, and if, when I am strong and well, and able to cope with you, I fail to find my darling may He turn every happiness I ever hope to know into sorrow, and blight the dearest earthly wish I may ever have again.”
Then she fell fainting at the feet of her mother, who, if not moved by the denunciation against herself, was alarmed at the death-like unconsciousness which lasted so long. But youth and health can endure much and live, and Edith came back to life and sense again, but lay utterly prostrate and helpless, with a choking lump in her throat which prevented her from speaking above the faintest whisper. To move her that day to other and better quarters was impossible, nor did Mrs. Fordham care particularly to do it. No one there would know of the child’s absence, for no one ever came into their room except Mary Stover, who was always quiet and respectful, and who on this day when she brought up warm water for the tea, never spoke or seemed to notice anything.
Next morning Edith was better, and when Mary came with the breakfast she was bidden to tell her mistress that Mrs. Fordham was going away at once, but would pay the month’s rent just the same.
“Very well, ma’am. I’ll tell her when she comes in. She’s out marketin’ now,” was the girl’s reply as she left the room; and when Mrs. Jones, the owner of the house, returned, her late lodgers were gone, and Mary handed her the rent for the whole month, as Mrs. Fordham had bidden her to do.
Mrs. Jones was surprised at the sudden departure of people of whom she had been a little proud, inasmuch as they were above the class which usually stopped with her, but the money for the whole month and the certainty that she knew of other lodgers to take the rooms, kept her quiet, and she merely said:
“They were in a mighty hurry to be off. Do you know where they are gone?”
Mary did not. A handsome carriage had come for them, and madam almost carried the young lady to it, she said, adding:
“That was a very pretty lass, with the sweetest face I ever saw.”
To this Mrs. Jones assented, and as just then there was a ring, and people were announced looking for rooms, her late tenants passed as completely from her mind as they passed from her surroundings to a new life in a pleasanter part of London.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE.
The shock of finding her baby gone, together with the removal from Dorset Street, in her weak state brought on another faint; and when the carriage stopped before the house in the vicinity of Belgrave Square, Edith lay unconscious in the arms of her mother, who carried her up the steps and into the large airy room, where for a time they were to stay until she had decided upon her future course, and her daughter’s health was restored. In a few weeks at most they should move again, Mrs. Fordham thought, but in this she was mistaken. Edith did not rally; the fainting fit was succeeded by a low nervous fever, which lasted for so long that the hedge roses were in blossom, and the breath of early summer was stealing in at her window when she was at last able to walk across the floor.
“Now, mother,” she said one morning, when for the first time in months she was dressed and sitting up. “Now, you must go for baby; go to-day,—will you,—or shall I send some one else?”
She spoke decidedly, and Mrs. Fordham, who felt that there was a change in her daughter, and that henceforth their relations to each other must be different from what they had heretofore been, did not oppose her, but answered, readily:
“I will go myself;” and an hour later she stood again at the door of —— Street Foundling Hospital. She was a clergyman’s widow, she said, and had come to make inquiries concerning a child named Heloise, which was left there some time in January. Could they tell her anything about it?
They could tell her, and they did, and with a throbbing of the heart and a relieved expression on her face, she started home, where Edith was waiting for her.
“Where is it, mother?” was the question asked eagerly.
“Edith, baby is dead. It only lived three weeks, they told me. It was born, it seems, with some affection of the heart, which, under any circumstances, would have ended its life in a short time, the physician said. It had every possible care, and died with little or no pain. I was particular to inquire about that, as I knew you would wish to know. There, there, my child, don’t take it so hard,” and Mrs. Fordham laid her hand on the bowed head of the sorrowing girl, who was weeping passionately. “It was wrong perhaps to take it from you, and I am sorry now did it. I thought then it was for the best, for a baby would be in our way. Forgive me, Edith, and let us bury the past forever.”
She stooped to kiss her daughter, in whose mind there was no shadow of doubt that what her mother had told her was true. Her baby was dead, and though she mourned for it truly she knew that it was far better off in heaven than in that hospital, with only strangers to care for it; and gradually, as the days went by and she felt her strength and health coming back again, the sense of loss and pain which at first had weighed so heavily upon her, began to give way, and more than one of the lodgers in the house noticed and commented upon the great beauty of the young girl, whom they sometimes met upon the stairs or saw sitting by her window. They knew the grave woman dressed in widow’s weeds was Mrs. Fordham, and as the young girl was her daughter they naturally supposed her to be Miss Fordham, a mistake which the mother took no pains to rectify; while Edith, who had suffered so much, began to feel an utter inability to oppose her own will to that of her mother, and when the latter said to her, “It is not necessary for you to explain to others that your name is not Fordham,” she passively acquiesced: and thus none of the lodgers ever heard the name of Lyle, or dreamed of that grave across the sea at Schuyler Hill, or the dreary room in Dorset Street, and the scenes enacted there. All these were buried in the past, and there was nothing in the way of Mrs. Fordham’s plans, except, indeed, the means to carry them out.
Once the mother had hoped much from her daughter’s voice, which was a fine contralto of great power and compass; but that hope was gone, for on the dreadful day when, with the fury of a tigress, Edith had invoked Heaven’s curse upon her mother if so much as a hair of baby’s head was harmed, it seemed as if a hand of iron had clutched her throat with a remorseless grasp, which had for a time deprived her of her powers of utterance, except in a hoarse whisper. At intervals, even now, she felt the grip of those fingers, and would start suddenly with a sense of suffocation, which soon passed away, and left her breathing free as ever. But the glorious voice did not come back, and though she sometimes sang some sweet, low song, her voice was very weak, and a musical education, so far as singing was concerned, was of course out of the question; but for all other branches the best of teachers were procured, and Edith, who possessed a fondness for books, progressed so rapidly as to astonish even herself, while her mother would have been perfectly content but for one little annoyance which haunted her continually, and which increased with every succeeding day. Her finances were fearfully low; nor did she know where aid was to come from.
Since leaving Dorset Street she had assumed a mode of life far above her means, and she was seriously considering the propriety of taking lodgers herself instead of being lodged, when fortune sent in her way a kind, simple-hearted old man, with less of brains than money, as was proved by his offering himself to Mrs. Fordham, whose comely face and dignified bearing attracted his fancy, and who accepted him at once and became Mrs. Dr. Barrett, with a pleasant home in a quiet part of London, and money enough to supply every comfort of life, as well as some of its luxuries.
Though twice married Dr. Barrett had never had a child, and his kind, fatherly heart went out at once to Edith, whom he loved and treated as a daughter, and who spent under his roof the happiest, most peaceful years of her life.
As it is not my intention to narrate in detail the incidents of those years, during which Edith was first a pupil, then a governess, and then an organist at St. John’s, I shall pass over them silently, and take my readers with me to a time when in her full maturity of beauty and grace, such as few women have ever possessed, she stood just on the verge of the brilliant life her mother had so desired for her, and which proved to be so different from anything of which the wily, scheming woman had dreamed.
CHAPTER VII.
ELEVEN YEARS LATER.
Dr. Barrett was dead; and as with his life the income ceased which had made Mrs. Fordham so comfortable, she was again reduced to the necessity of earning her daily bread, which she did by doing plain sewing, and letting two or three rooms of the little cottage, which was all her husband had left her.
Edith was not with her. For two years or more she had been the companion of a Mrs. Sinclair, a wealthy invalid, who had advertised for some young person who was a good reader and did not object to sick people. The salary offered was not large, but as there was a prospect of permanency, Edith had answered the advertisement in person and been preferred to scores of others, who sought for the place. For six months and more Mrs. Sinclair had been abroad, but she was now in her pleasant home, a few miles from London, and on the summer morning of which I write she lay on the couch in her sitting-room, which opened upon the terrace, where, on a rustic bench beneath the shadow of a maple tree, a young girl was sitting, her white hands holding idly the book she was not reading, and her eyes looking far away, as if in quest of something never found. That was Edith, whom one would hardly recognize, so entirely changed was she in style, and manner, and general appearance. The bright color which had once been so noticeable was gone, and her complexion was clear and white, and smooth as marble, save when some sudden emotion called a faint color to her cheek. The eyes, too, were darker now, and when kindling with excitement, seemed almost black with the long curling lashes which shaded them. There was also a darker shade on the beautiful golden brown hair, which was coiled in heavy braids around her well-shaped head, and added to her apparent height. Perfect in form and face, graceful in manner, always self-possessed and ready, with the right word in the right place, Edith Lyle was a favorite wherever she went, and, during the two years she had been with Mrs. Sinclair, that lady had learned to love her as a sister, and treated her with all the consideration of a friend and equal. And Edith was very happy, save when a thought of the past came over her, and then there would steal into her eyes a look of pain, and the muscles about her mouth would contract, as if she were forcing back words she longed to utter, but dared not.
Her marriage was still a secret to every one save her mother. Even Dr. Barrett had known nothing of it until just before he died, when she told him her story, and begged him not to hate her, because it was not earlier told.
The doctor was surprised, but not angry, and, laying his hand fondly on the young girl’s head, he said:
“Poor child, you have suffered a great deal, and I pity you so much; but I am not angry,—no, no. I reckon your mother is right. She generally is. She’s a most wonderful woman for business. You’ll get on better as a girl than you would as a widow,—that is, you’ll be saved a great deal of idle, curious questioning, and make a better match by and by. With that face and that manner of yours, you ought to marry a title; as Widow Lyle you could not. Had the child lived it would be different; now it is dead, you had better let matters remain as they are. It will please your mother so, and be quite as well for you.”
This was the doctor’s advice, which lifted a heavy load from Edith’s mind. Perhaps it was better to keep silent with regard to her marriage, she thought, especially as no one could be harmed by it; and gradually, as time passed on, she came to think of the past as a horrible dream, from which she had awakened to find the horror gone and the sunlight of content, if not of happiness, still shining around her. She, however, preferred her real name, and when she went to Mrs. Sinclair it was as Edith Lyle, and when that lady on hearing her mother mentioned as Mrs. Barrett asked how that was, Edith replied:
“Mother has been married twice. Dr. Barrett was my stepfather.”
Thus Mrs. Sinclair had no suspicion of the truth, and soon learned to regard Miss Lyle as more than a mere hired companion, and was never long easy when away from her. On the day of which I write, they had returned the previous night after an absence of several months, and, attracted by the freshness of the morning and the beauty of the grounds, Edith had left Mrs. Sinclair to read the pile of letters she found awaiting her, and stolen out to her favorite seat beneath the maples, where, through an opening in the distant trees of the park, she could catch glimpses of the Thames and the great city with its forest of spires and domes. And as she sat there in her tasteful cambric wrapper, with only a bit of blue ribbon at her throat and in her hair, no one who saw her would have dreamed of that tragedy of by-gone years in which she had been so greatly interested, and of which she was thinking that June morning, so like that day at Schuyler Hill when the brightness of her life had so suddenly been stricken out. Should she ever go there again,—ever see that grave which Ettie had promised to keep against her coming? Yes. She would go alone some time across the sea, and lay her face upon the grass which covered her lost love, and tell him of the child that died and whose grave she never saw.
“But I will see it before I go,” she said; “I will find where they laid my little one, and it may be—”
She did not finish the sentence, for just then the silvery stroke of a bell reached her ear and she knew she was wanted within. She found Mrs. Sinclair with many letters lying open before her, and one in her hand which she had evidently just read, and which seemed to disturb her.
“I am sorry to call you when I know how fresh and bright it is out doors,” she said, as Edith came to her side, “but I find here a letter, written weeks ago, which must be answered at once. It is from my brother——”
“Your brother!” Edith repeated, in some surprise, for that was the first allusion she had ever heard Mrs. Sinclair make to any near relatives.
“Yes, my half brother Howard,” was the reply. “I’ve never spoken of him because—because,—well, there was a kind of coldness between us on account of his wife, whom I did not like. He brought her here when they were first married, and had she been a duchess she could not have borne herself more loftily than she did. I did not think her manners in good taste, and told my brother so; and as he was in the heyday of his honeymoon and saw nothing amiss in his Emily, we had a little tiff and parted coldly, and I have not seen him since. Regularly at the birth of his children he has written to me, and just before you came he wrote to say that Emily was dead. I answered, of course, and said I was sorry for him, and that I should be glad to see him and his children. There are three of them, and the eldest, a boy, bears my maiden and married name, Godfrey Sinclair Schuyler——”
“Schuyler!” Edith said, and if possible, her always white face was a shade paler than its wont at the sound of that name.
But Mrs. Sinclair was intent on her letter, and did not look at her as she replied:
“Yes, my brother is Howard Schuyler, and his father, who was of English descent, married my mother, Mrs. Godfrey, when I was seven years old, and took us to New York, where mother died when Howard was a baby. I stayed in New York till I was seventeen, and then came back to live with my aunt and have seen but little of Howard since.”
“And does he live in New York!” Edith asked; and Mrs. Sinclair replied:
“Yes, or rather a little way out, in the town called Hampstead, on the Hudson river. He has a beautiful place, I am told, which they call Schuyler Hill.”
“And you have news from him?” Edith said next, her heart beating rapidly at the lady’s reply.
“Yes. He is in Scotland, it seems, and wrote to know if I could receive him and his son Godfrey about this time,—let me see, the 15th of June he said, and this is the 14th. I was to answer at once, and direct to Edinburgh, where he would wait my reply. His letter was written ten days ago, and I am so much afraid he has become impatient at not hearing from me, that he will perhaps go directly to the continent without stopping here at all. My head feels so badly, would you mind writing a few lines for me, just to say that I am home, and shall be glad to see him?”
“Certainly not,” Edith answered in a voice which did not in the least betray the storm of feeling she experienced at being thus unexpectedly brought face to face as it were with a past she had almost outlived.
To stay in that room with Mrs. Sinclair while she wrote to Colonel Schuyler was impossible, and asking permission to withdraw, she went to her own chamber to be alone while she penned a letter which by some one of those subtle emotions or presentiments which none can explain, she felt would influence her whole future life. She could not understand it, nor did she attempt to seek a reason for it, but she felt certain that Colonel Schuyler was the arbiter of her fate, and that with his coming would begin a new era for her, and her hand trembled so at first that she could scarcely hold the pen, and much less write a word. At last she commenced:
“Oakwood, June 14th, 18—, Colonel Schuyler,” and there she stopped, overpowered with the memories which the sight of that name evoked. Once more she stood with her lover at the garden gate, and saw the night fog creeping across the river, and heard in the distance the faint rumble of the fast coming train which had thundered by just as she gave her boy-husband the last good-by kiss, and fastened in his buttonhole the rose, which she still carefully preserved together with a silken curl cut from baby’s head during the first days of her maternity.
How every little thing connected with that curl and rose came back to her now, and for an instant she felt faint and sick again, just as she had felt when they brought the dead man in and carried him out again. In her desolation she had said: “I hate the Schuylers,” and she almost hated them now, even though she knew them innocent of any wrong to her. Col. Schuyler she remembered as a tall, fine-looking man, and she had him in her mind just as he was when he stood in the garden path and glanced wonderingly up at her as she called out the name and age and birth-place of the poor youth whose memory he wished to honor. That was the only time he had ever seen her, and she had no fear that he would recognize her now. So it was not this which made her tremble as she again took up her pen to bid him come to Oakwood, his sister’s country-seat. It was a shrinking from she did not know what, and after the letter was written and approved by Mrs. Sinclair, she felt tempted to tear it up instead of giving it to the servant whose duty it was to post it. But this she dared not do, and the letter was sent on its way, and as soon as it was possible to receive an answer one came to Mrs. Sinclair, who read aloud at the breakfast table:
“Dear Sister Helen:—Yours of the 14th received and contents noted. Shall probably be with you the day after you get this. Godfrey will accompany me.
“Truly, your brother, Howard.”
“That is so like Howard,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “‘Short and crisp and right to the point.’ One would almost think he had no heart, and yet I know he has, though he is very peculiar in some things, very reserved, and very proud, and a great stickler for justice and honor. Why, I do not suppose he would say or act a thing he did not mean even to save his life or that of his best friend.”
“Yes,” Edith said, idly toying with her spoon and feeling a still greater dread of this man of honor, who would not act a lie to save his life. “Yes: how old is he?”
“How old? let me see. I was past eight when he was born, and I am forty-nine; that makes him almost forty-one; quite a young man still, and fine-looking, too. I dare say he will marry again;” and, glancing across the table at the beautiful lady sitting there, a curious thought sprang into Mrs. Sinclair’s mind, which, however, had no echo in Edith’s heart.
She had asked Col. Schuyler’s age more for the sake of saying something than from any curiosity, and she hardly heard Mrs. Sinclair’s reply, so little did she care. His age or personal appearance was nothing to her. It was his presence in the house she dreaded, because it would awaken so many unpleasant memories, and take her back to a time she had almost forgotten in the pain which had come to her during the later years. But he was coming to-morrow, and at Mrs. Sinclair’s request she herself saw that his room and Godfrey’s were made ready, and then at another request from her mistress she practised her best instrumental pieces, for “Howard used to be fond of music, and was sure to like Miss Lyle’s playing.”
“Try that little Scotch ballad, please. I thought your voice stronger when you sang it to me last. Strange that it should have left you so suddenly! What was the cause of it, did you say?” Mrs. Sinclair asked.
“A sudden shock to my nerves when I was sick,” was Edith’s reply, and she felt again the iron fingers on her throat, and that choking sensation as if her heart were leaping from her mouth.
Mrs. Sinclair was very fond of music, especially of singing, and knowing this, Edith had frequently sang to her some simple ballads which were written so low as to come within the compass of her weak voice, but she could not do it now, and excusing herself, she rose from the piano saying she had a headache and needed fresh air.
“I have not seen mother since my return. She was out the day I called, and if you are willing I would like to go into town this morning; the ride will do me good.”
Mrs. Sinclair was willing, and accordingly an hour later a handsome carriage stopped before Mrs. Dr. Barrett’s gate, and Edith went slowly up the walk toward the open door.
CHAPTER VIII.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
The world had not gone very well with Mrs. Dr. Barrett since her husband’s death. Her house was too small to admit of many lodgers, and as those who came were mostly Americans, they did not stop long, and required so much of her that she was glad when they left, hoping to do better the next time. A pain under her left shoulder made it hard for her to sew, and but for Edith’s generosity she would have been badly off. Edith was very kind to her, and gave her the larger part of her salary, and Mrs. Barrett was very proud of her daughter, even though that daughter had sorely disappointed her in not having married or shown any disposition to do so, nor, so far as Mrs. Barrett knew, had she received but one offer, and that from so questionable a quarter that a refusal was the only alternative. She had been away from home when Edith called upon her the day following her return from the Continent, but she found the card which Edith left, and when her maid glowingly described the carriage, and the beautiful young lady who came in it, she said, with a great deal of pride, “That was my daughter.”
“And sure she walked as if the ground wasn’t good enough for her to step on,” was Kitty’s mental comment, as she wondered at the difference between mother and child.
After that day Mrs. Barrett was constantly expecting Edith, and once she thought of going to Oakwood to see her, but on the occasion of her first and only visit there, Mrs. Sinclair, whose likes and dislikes were very strong, had conceived a great aversion for her, and had intimated to Edith that though she was at liberty to visit her mother when she pleased, it was not desirable that the latter should come often to Oakwood. Knowing this, Mrs. Barrett did not like to venture, and she remained at home, waiting impatiently for Edith until the morning when she saw at last the well-known carriage at the gate, and Edith coming up the walk.
How beautiful she was, and how like a princess she looked even in her simple muslin dress and straw hat, with a lace scarf around her graceful shoulders. Everything which Edith wore became her well, and now with a faint flush on her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes, she had never seemed fairer to the proud mother than when she swept into the house with a grace and dignity peculiarly her own, and put up her lips to be kissed. Mrs. Barrett was glad to see her, and asked her many questions concerning her journey, and admired her dress, and scarf, and boots, and gloves, and asked what they cost, and told about herself, how she had but one lodger now, and that he found fault with everything, and that the day before she had received application for rooms from a respectable looking woman, who seemed to belong to the middle or lower class. “Indeed, she said, she had been out to service before her marriage, but that her husband had left her a few shares in the —— Bank, so that she was quite comfortable now.
“I never thought I would take any one who was not first-class,” Mrs. Barrett said, “but my purse is so low that I should have made an exception in favor of Mrs. Rogers if she had not told me her cousin was waiting-maid at Oakwood.”
“Oh, that is Norah Long,” Edith answered indifferently, and her mother continued:
“It seemed like coming down, to lodge and serve a cousin of Mrs. Sinclair’s maid, and when she said she had a little girl about eleven years old, and that she wished her to have a room by herself, I made that an excuse for refusing her. I could not give up my best room to a child, I said, and I did not care to take children, anyway.”
“I think you were very foolish, mother; if this Mrs. Rogers would pay well, and is respectable, why not take her as soon as another? The child is certainly no objection, and it might be pleasant to have it in the house.”
“Perhaps so, but I did not like the woman’s manner. When she asked for the extra room I told her it belonged to my daughter, Miss Lyle, who was travelling with Mrs. Sinclair, of Oakwood. ‘Oh, Miss Lyle,’ she said, ‘I have heard my cousin speak of her. She is very beautiful, I believe.’ I thought her impertinent, and answered, ‘People call her so. Can I do anything more for you?’ Even then she did not go, but offered me a shilling more than my price for the rooms. Indeed, she seemed resolved to have them, and only a positive refusal on the ground of not liking to have the child availed to send her away. I never thought I should be reduced so low that the cousin of a servant would insist upon lodging with me,” and Mrs. Barrett began to break down a little; then rousing herself, she said, suddenly, “Edith, will you never marry and raise me out of this? Did you find no one abroad?”
“No one, mother,” and Edith flushed to her forehead, while her voice had in it a tone of irritation, as she continued: “How many times must I tell you that I do not go about the country trying to sell myself. I am willing to work for you as long as I have strength, but marry I never shall, and probably could not if I would.”
“You, with that face, say you could not marry!” Mrs. Barrett exclaimed.
And Edith rejoined:
“The man who would take me for my face alone I do not want, and the man whom I could respect enough to marry must know all my past, and, after knowing it, how many, think you, would care to have me?”
There was a gesture of impatience on the part of Mrs. Barrett, but, before she could speak, Edith continued:
“Colonel Schuyler, of Schuyler Hill, is expected at Oakwood to-morrow.”
“Colonel Schuyler!” and Mrs. Barrett was surprised. “How does he happen to come to Oakwood?”
“He is Mrs. Sinclair’s half brother. I never knew it until the other day, and Lady Emily is dead, and he is travelling in Europe with Godfrey.”
“Lady Emily dead! She was a sweet-mannered lady, and young, too. Why, Colonel Schuyler cannot be very old. Not much past forty, I am sure, and he was very fine-looking.”
Edith had risen to go, and did not in the least understand what was in her mother’s mind; and buttoning her long gloves, she said:
“While Colonel Schuyler is there, Mrs. Sinclair’s time will be occupied with him, and she will not have so much need of me. I will try to see you oftener. I wish I could take you out of this altogether, mother, for I know how distasteful the life is to you after having known one so much better; but my salary is not large, and Mrs. Sinclair will never raise it. It is a principle of hers to give so much and no more. If she were not so kind, I would try for another situation.”
“No, no,” the mother said, in some alarm; “don’t leave Oakwood on any account. I’ve always felt that something would come of your being there. I can do very well as I am, only it was humiliating to have that Mrs. Rogers, who had been in service, come to me for rooms, and act as if she were my equal.”
“I do not see it in that light, mother,” Edith said. “If Mrs. Rogers is respectable, and can pay, I advise you to take her. It is far better to have some one permanently, than the changing, floating class you usually have about you. Beside that, it must be pleasanter to have a decent woman in the house than a lot of foreign men of whom you know nothing. Suppose I speak to Norah, and tell her you will take her cousin if she has not secured apartments elsewhere; and if she wants my old room for her child, let her have it. I do not occupy it often, and would rather some nice little girl was in it than any one else. Yes, I think I’ll speak to Norah.” And without waiting for her mother to object, even if she wished to do so, Edith went hastily down the walk to the carriage waiting for her.
She found Mrs. Sinclair asleep, and Norah mending a lace handkerchief for her outside the door.
“Norah,” she said, “has your cousin, Mrs. Rogers, yet suited herself with lodgings?”
“No, ma’am. She was just here. You must have met her and the little girl somewhere in the park. You would have noticed the child.”
But Edith had been too much occupied with her own thoughts as she drove through the park to see the woman and child sitting on a bench beneath the trees, and looking curiously at her as she drove by.
“No, I met no one,” she said; “but I wish you would see your cousin, and tell her that Mrs. Barrett, of Caledonia Street, No. —, will accommodate her with rooms.”
“Two rooms?” Norah asked.
And Edith replied:
“Yes, two rooms, if she likes, and pays in advance.”
“She’s sure to do that,” Norah answered, quickly; “and she’s able, too. Her man left her well beforehand, and the child has something, too. That’s what makes Mary,—my cousin, please,—so careful of her. She isn’t her own, you see; she’s adopted, and has a little money, and Mary worships her as something different from common ones; and well she may, for a sweeter, prettier lass was never born in England than little Gertie Westbrooke.”
There was a sound in Mrs. Sinclair’s room, and Edith hastened to remove her hat and scarf so as to be in readiness for the lady when she was needed, and what Norah had said to her of her cousin and the child was scarcely heeded, except, indeed, the name, Gertie Westbrooke, which struck her as very pretty, and twice that day she caught herself repeating it, while in her dreams that night it seemed constantly in her mind; and when at an early hour she woke from a troubled sleep, her chamber was full of the faint echoes of the name of the little girl who was to occupy her old room and bed in Caledonia Street.
CHAPTER IX.
GODFREY SCHUYLER.
It was the day after Edith’s visit to her mother, and taking advantage of the hour when Mrs. Sinclair took her after-lunch nap, she went out with her book into the grounds, and strolled on until she came to a clump of trees at the farthest extremity of the park, where was a little rustic chair. This had always been her favorite resort, the place she sought when she wished to be alone, and here she sat down, ostensibly to read, but really to think,—not so much of the past as of the future. That her kind, indulgent mistress, who had been an invalid for so many years, was failing fast, was very apparent to her experienced eyes, and only that morning she had observed that the handkerchief Mrs. Sinclair held to her lips after a paroxysm of coughing had a faint coloring of blood upon it.
“And where shall I find a home like this when she is gone?” Edith asked herself, sadly. “I might go back to mother and help her with her sewing, and take Kitty’s place,” she said, shuddering a little as she thought of the small house in Caledonia Street, so different from the pleasant home which had been hers for more than two years.
She might go out as a governess again, but when she remembered the insult which she had twice received when a governess, once from the young man of the house, who looked upon her as lawful prey, and once from the master, a brutal wretch who could not withstand her beauty, she thought any life preferable to that. Her face and manner were both against her, and if Mrs. Sinclair died, her only safety was in her mother’s house.
“Yes, that will be the end of it,” she said, a little bitterly, as she remembered all her mother had hoped for her and what she had once hoped for herself.
So much was she absorbed in these reflections that she did not at first see the two gentlemen who had entered the Park by a side gate, and were walking slowly up the path, which led directly past the chair in which she was sitting. Two young gentlemen she thought them, for one at least was very young, with a supple, springy grace in every movement, while the other, whose step was quite as rapid, though it had more dignity and character in it, could not be old; or even middle-aged, with that fine, erect form, that heavy, silken beard, and wealth of dark brown hair. That it could be Col. Schuyler and his son she never dreamed, for though Mrs. Sinclair had said her brother was not forty-one, Edith, who, like most young people, held forty as an age bordering on antediluvianism, thought of him always as a grayish-haired man, with a stoop, perhaps, and a slow tread, and not at all like this man coming so swiftly toward her, and pointing out something in the Park to his companion. He had evidently been at Oakwood before, for she heard him say:
“We ought to see the house from this point. This must be a new path since I was here, and yet I remember that little foot-bridge. Your mother and I used often to come down to it; she liked to see the water falling over the white stones. That was nineteen years ago.”
“Hush-sh, father! look, there’s a young lady sitting in the shadow of those trees,” came warningly from the younger man, or boy, and then with a great heart throb, Edith knew who the strangers were and arose to her feet.
They were quite up to her now, and both removed their hats and stood with heads uncovered, while the elder said to her:
“I beg your pardon, miss, but will this path take us directly to the house at Oakwood? I was here many years ago and ought to know the way, but it seems a little strange to me.”
His voice was very pleasant and his manner deferential as he stood looking at her, while Edith replied that the path did lead directly to the house, which could be seen as soon as he reached the slight elevation yonder. Then with eyes cast down she stood waiting for him to pass on, she thinking of that one time when she had spoken to him from the window of the cottage in far-off Hampstead, and he thinking of the marvellous beauty of her face, and wondering who she could be.
“Some guest at Oakwood, undoubtedly,” he thought, and then he put another question to her and said, “Do you know if Mrs. Sinclair is at home this morning? I am her brother, Colonel Schuyler, from America, and this is my son Godfrey.”
With a bow to both gentlemen Edith replied:
“Mrs. Sinclair is at home, and is expecting you. I am Edith Lyle, Mrs. Sinclair’s hired companion.”
She said this proudly, and with a purpose not to deceive the gentlemen with regard to her position longer than was necessary. She had so often been spoken to by strangers in just the respectful, deferential tone with which Colonel Schuyler had addressed her, and then had seen the look of unmistakable interest give place to one of surprise and indifference when her real position was known, that she wished to start fair with these guests of her employer, and she was neither astonished nor disappointed when she saw the peculiar look she knew so well steal over the grave, proud face of Colonel Schuyler, who bowed as he said:
“Oh, yes. I knew she had some young person staying with her. Thanks for your directions. We shall find our way now very well. Come, Godfrey.”
But Godfrey was in no particular haste. A beautiful girl was attractive to him under all circumstances, whether the daughter of a hundred earls or the paid companion of his aunt, and his manner had not changed one whit when Edith announced herself as his inferior according to the creed of the beau monde.
“Come, my son,” Colonel Schuyler said again, and then Godfrey passed on with a look at Edith, which plainly meant: “I’d enough sight rather stay with you, but you see it’s impossible.”
It was the old, old story; contempt from the older ones and impertinence from the younger so soon as she was known for a dependant, Edith thought, and a few hot, resentful tears trickled through the white fingers she pressed to her eyes as the two men walked away and were lost to view over the hill. And yet for once she was mistaken. Colonel Schuyler had felt no contempt for her; he never felt that for any woman, and the change in his manner, when he found who she was, was involuntary, and owing wholly to his early training, which had built a barrier between himself and those who earned their daily bread! He had taken Edith for the possible young lady of some noble house, and was disappointed to find her only the companion of his sister, but a lady still, judging from her manners and speech; while Godfrey would sooner have parted with his right hand than have been rude to any woman.
A dress, whether it hung in slatternly folds around a washerwoman, or adorned the daughter of a duchess, was sacred in his eyes, and though in a certain way he had all the pride of the Schuylers and Rossiters combined, it was a pride which prompted him to treat every one kindly. His mother, who had been very fond of him, had done her best to make him understand that, as a Rossiter and Schuyler, it behooved him to demean himself like one worthy of so illustrious a line of ancestry; but Godfrey did not care for ancestry, nor blood, nor social distinctions, and played with every ragged boy in Hampstead, and sat for hours with old Peterkin the cobbler, and kept little Johnnie Mack at Schuyler Hill all day when his mother was out working, and the child would have been alone but for this thoughtfulness. Everybody knew Godfrey Schuyler, and everybody liked him, especially the middle and poorer classes, to whom he was as the brightness of the morning.
An intolerable tease, Godfrey was something of a terror to his eldest sister Julia, whose imperious and sometimes insolent manners he mimicked and ridiculed, while to Alice Creighton of New York, who he knew had been selected for his wife, he was a perpetual source of joy and annoyance,—joy when he treated her with that tenderness and gentleness so natural to him in his intercourse with girls, and annoyance when even with his arm around her waist he mimicked her affected ways and her constant allusions to “when I was abroad.”
In stature Godfrey was tall, with a graceful, willowy form, a bright, though rather dark complexion, soft, laughing blue eyes, with a world of mischief in them, and rich brown hair which clustered in curls about his forehead, and which he parted in the middle until his sister Julia, who did not like it, called him a prig and an ape, while Alice, who did like it, said it was “pretty, and just as the young noblemen wore their hair when she was abroad.” That was enough for Godfrey. If Alice Creighton liked it because she saw it abroad, he surely would not follow the fashion, and the next morning at breakfast his curly locks were parted on the side very near to his left ear, and a black ribbon bound two or three times around his head to keep his refractory hair in its place.
“If ever he went abroad he hoped he should not make a fool of himself,” he said, and now that he was abroad, he bristled all over with nationality, and wore his country outside as plainly as if he had had placarded on his back, “I am an American, and proud of it, too.”
Nothing was quite equal to New York in his estimation, and he was particularly averse to the rosy, healthy-looking girls whom he everywhere met, and in his first letters to his sisters and Alice he told them they were beauties compared with the English girls; “even if Alice’s nose was a pug and Jule’s forehead so low that it took a microscope to find it, and Em’s ankles no bigger than a pair of knitting-needles.”
But when he came upon Edith Lyle, in her simple white wrapper, with her perfectly transparent complexion, and the knot of blue ribbon in her golden-brown hair, he acknowledged to himself that here at last, even on English soil, was a woman more beautiful than anything he had ever seen across the water, and he took off his hat and stood uncovered before her as readily as if she had been the queen. That she was only his aunt’s companion, instead of the high-born lady he had at first supposed her to be, made no difference with him. She was a woman, and as he reached the little hill beyond where she was sitting, he turned to look at her again, and said:
“By George, father, isn’t she a beauty?”
Mr. Schuyler knew to whom his son referred, and answered, in his usual grave, quiet way:
“She had a fine profile, I thought. Yes, certainly, a remarkable profile.”
They were near the house by this time, and in the excitement of meeting with his sister and the long conversation which followed, Colonel Schuyler hardly thought of Edith again until dinner was announced and she came in with Godfrey. That young man had soon grown tired of listening to talk about people and things dating back to a time he could not remember, and had sauntered out into the grounds in quest of Edith, who was more to his taste than the close drawing-room and the invalid on the couch.
Edith was in the summer-house now, and Godfrey joined her there, and in his pleasant, winning way asked if he was intruding, and if he might come in and occupy one of the chairs, which looked so tempting under the green vines.
“It was an awful bore to hear old folks talk about a lot of antediluvians,” he said; “and if she did not mind he would sit with her awhile.”
Edith nodded assent and motioned him to a chair, which he took, and removing his soft hat and brushing back his curls, he said:
“Now let us talk.”
To talk was Godfrey’s delight; and to Edith’s interrogatory:
“What shall we talk about?” he replied:
“Whatever you like;” and when she rejoined:
“Tell me of yourself and your home in America,” he mentally pronounced her a fine girl, with no nonsense about her; and in less than an hour had told nearly all he knew of himself and of his family. They had a splendid place in Hampstead, he said, not so big and rambling as the fine houses in England, but pleasanter every way, and more home-like, with such a fine view of the Hudson and the blue mountains beyond.
“You have never been in America?” he said, affirmatively, thus saving Edith the necessity of answering, “and so you do not know how beautiful the Hudson is. Why, it beats the Rhine all to nothing.”
“Have you seen the Rhine?” Edith asked, smiling at this enthusiastic youth, so wholly American.
“No,” and Godfrey blushed as he met her smile; “but I’ve read of it, and heard Alice Creighton rave about it by the hour, and still I know the Hudson is ahead. You ought to see it once in the neighborhood of the Highlands; the view from our tower is magnificent, with those blue peaks stretching away in the distance, and rising one above the other until I used to think them the stairs which led to Heaven.”
How Edith’s heart throbbed as she listened to his description of a place she, too, knew so well, though of her knowledge she dared not give a sign; and how she longed to question her companion of that grave on the hillside! But she could not, and as Godfrey evidently expected her to say something, she asked if he had always lived in Hampstead.
“No; I was born on Fifth Avenue, in a brown-stone front, so that the first breath I drew was sufficiently stuffy and aristocratic; but I went to the country when I was five or six years old. Father took the old house down and built the new one. I never shall forget it,—never, for the dreadful thing which happened.”
Edith knew just what was coming, and steeled herself to listen to the details of that tragedy which had colored her whole life. Again the fingers of iron were clutching her throat, while Godfrey told of the young man whom he liked so much, and who had saved another’s life at the loss of his own.
“And when they reached him, the grass was red with blood, and he lay white, and still, and dead.”
Godfrey’s voice trembled as he said these words, and he paused a moment in his tale, while Edith clasped her hands tightly together and tried to speak, but could not for the smothered sensation choking and stifling her so.
“We buried him in our own lot, and bought him a grand monument, and there are many flowers round, the spot,” Godfrey continued: and then he glanced at Edith, and starting up, exclaimed: “Why, what is the matter? You are whiter than a ghost. You are not going to faint? You must not faint! I don’t know what to do with girls who faint. Alice did it once, or made believe, and I kissed her and brought her to quick.”
He did not kiss Edith, but he fanned her with his soft hat until she waved him off, and found voice to say:
“It is the heat, and your vivid description of that poor fellow’s death. Did you tell me he was married?”
She asked the question from an intense desire to know if anything had ever been said of herself in connection with the dead.
“No, he was not married, but there was some talk of an affaire du cœur between him and a young English girl, who went off soon after. There’s a bug on your dress, Miss Lyle. Why,”—and, as if it had just occurred to him, Godfrey continued,—“your name is the same as his. It cannot be, though, that you were at all related. He lived up near Alnwick. On our way from Scotland, father and I hunted up his friends, a sister and widowed mother,—poor but honest women, as the biographers say. The mother lives with her daughter, and we gave them a thousand dollars, and the young woman promised to call her little boy after me. The Governor,—that’s father,—did not quite like it, I guess, but I don’t see the harm. Why, I’ve named three different Dutch babies in Hampstead, all the children of Mrs. Peterkin Vandeusenhisen. Two of them are twins,—and I called one Godfrey Schuyler, and the other Schuyler Godfrey,—while the third, which happened to be a girl, was christened Alice Creighton,—that’s a young lady from New York, fathers ward, who is at Hampstead a great deal,—and so proud! You ought to have seen her bit of a pug nose go up when she heard the Dutch baby baptized. Why, she nearly jumped out of her skin when Mrs. Van,—as I call her for short,—on being asked for the name, replied: ‘Alice Creighton Vandeusenhisen, if you please.’ The last was a suggestion of my own, by way of making a more striking impression on Alice, because you see, Mrs. Vandeusenhisen had a son,—Peterkin, junior, who was in love with Miss Creighton, and used to send her cakes of maple sugar and sticks of molasses candy he made and pulled himself. You ought to see his hands! The day before the christening I dressed up like a gypsy and deceived the girls and told their fortune, and said Alice would marry a Dutchman, with a long name, like Vandue something. So complete was my disguise that they did not suspect me, and when Alice heard the name at church, Alice Creighton Vandeusenhisen, she started up as if to forbid the banns, and then catching sight of my face she understood it at once, and was so angry, and when we were home from church she cried and said she hated me and would never speak to me again. But she got over it, and last Christmas sent a wax doll with a squawk in its stomach to her namesake.”
Godfrey had wandered very far from the woman on the heather hills who had called Abelard Lyle her son, and though Edith wished to know something more of her she did not venture to question her companion lest he should wonder at her interest in an entire stranger. She had laughed immoderately at his account of the babies named for himself and Miss Alice, and when he finished she said:
“You must be very fond of children, I think.”
“Yes, I am. I’d like a houseful, and when I marry I mean to have enough boys to make a brass band. I told Alice so once, and her nose went higher than it did when she heard the baby’s name. She called me a wretch, and an insulting dog, and said she hated boys, and me most of all. I knew she didn’t, though, because you see,—well, Alice has ten thousand a year, and that will straighten the worst case of turn-up nose in the world. She is an orphan and father is her guardian, and he and mother and Uncle Calvert, that’s my half-uncle and Alice’s, too, put their heads together and thought she’d be a good match for me, and it is rather an understood thing that we will marry some time, but I don’t believe we are half as likely to as if they’d said nothing about it. A fellow don’t want his wife picked out and brought to him off-hand as Eve was brought to Adam.”
Here Godfrey paused, and rising from his chair shook down his pants, a habit of his when he was interested or excited, and as his sister Julia said, “had talk on the brain.” He certainly had it now, for Edith was the first one he had found whom he had cared to talk to since leaving the ship, and after two or three shakes he resumed his seat, and told her of himself particularly; how he was going to college the next year, if he was home in time, and after that intended to study law and distinguish himself, if possible.
“Mother was very proud of me, and hoped great things of me,” he said. “I do not wish to disappoint her, for though she is dead, I cannot help thinking that she knows about me just the same, and when I am tempted to yield to what you call the small vices, I always feel her thin white hand on my head where she laid it not long before she died, and said, ‘Be a good and great man, Godfrey, and avoid the first approaches of evil.’ Mother was what they call a fashionable woman, but she was good before she died, and so sure as there is a heaven, so sure she is there, and I’ve never smoked, nor touched a drop of spirits, nor sworn a word since she died, and I never mean to either.”
Godfrey’s voice was low and tender, and his manner subdued when he spoke of his mother, but very different when he touched upon his sisters and ridiculed Julia’s fine lady airs and Emma’s readiness to be stuffed,—his definition for believing everything she heard, even to the most preposterous story. They were at Schuyler Hill now, he said, and Alice was there too, studying with their governess, Miss Browning, who, between the three, was awfully nagged, though she was quite as airy and stuck-up as Alice and Jule, and called him “that dreadful boy!”
“Boy, indeed! and I most eighteen, and standing five feet ten in my socks, to say nothing of this incipient badge of manhood,” and he stroked complacently his chin and upper lip where the beginning of a brown beard was visible.
How he rattled on, his fresh young face glowing and lighting up with his excitement, and how intently Edith listened and watched the play of his fine features, and admired his boyish beauty! Surely in him there was nothing but goodness and truth, and as she looked at him she felt glad that his young life was spared, though she could not understand why her husband must have been sacrificed for him. Once in her bitterness she had felt that she hated Godfrey Schuyler, but she did not hate him now, and as she walked slowly with him toward the house, she would have given much to have been as fresh, and frank, and open as he was, instead of living the lie she was living. And to what intent? What good had the deception ever done her? What good could it do her, and why continue it longer? Why not be just what she was, with no concealment hanging over her, and startling her ofttimes with a dread of discovery? Why not tell Godfrey all about herself just as he had told her of himself? Surely, his recent talk with her would warrant such confidence, and why not commence at once a new life by openness and sincerity, even though she lost her place by it?
“I’ll do it and brave my mother, who alone has stood in my way so long,” she thought; and she began: “Mr. Schuyler”—but before she could say more, he interrupted her with:
“Don’t call me that. I’m too much of a boy. Call me Godfrey, please, unless the name is too suggestive of ‘Godfrey’s Cordial,’ in which case say Schuyler, but pray leave off the Mister till my whiskers will at least cast a shadow on the wall. Why, I dare say I shall call you by your first name yet. You cannot be much my senior. How old are you, Miss Lyle?”
It was a question which a little later in life, when more accustomed to the world and its usages, Godfrey would not have asked; but Edith answered unhesitatingly; “I am twenty-seven.”
“Zounds!” said Godfrey. “You don’t look it. I did not imagine you more than twenty. Why, you might almost be my mother! No, it will never do to call you Edith. Father’s eyebrows would actually meet in the centre at such audacity on my part; that’s a trick he has of scowling when disagreeably surprised. Notice it sometimes, please. The only wrinkle in his face is that valley between his eyes.”
They were in the hall by this time, and bowing to her voluble acquaintance, Edith passed on to her room, where for half an hour or more she sat thinking of the strange Providence which had brought her so near to her past life, and wondering, too, what the result would be, and if she should tell Godfrey as she had fully intended to do, when he interrupted her with his tide of talk. It did not seem as easy to do it now as it had a little while ago; the good opportunity was gone and might not return.
While thus musing the dressing-bell rang, and turning from the window she began to dress for dinner with more interest than usual. Her salary would not allow a very extensive or expensive wardrobe, even if she had desired it, which she did not. Her taste was simple, and she was one of the few to whom every color and style is becoming. Whatever she wore looked well upon her, and in a little country town she would undoubtedly have set the fashion for all. Selecting now from her wardrobe a soft, fleecy, gray tissue, with trimmings of pale blue, her favorite color, she tied about her throat a bit of rich lace which Mrs. Sinclair had given her, and wore the pretty set of pink coral, also that lady’s gift. It was not often that she curled her hair, but to-day she let two heavy ringlets fall upon her neck, and knew herself how well she was looking, when, at the ringing of the second bell, she descended to the hall where Godfrey was waiting for her. He had thought her very handsome in her morning wrapper and garden hat, and when he saw her now he gave a suppressed kind of whistle, and with as much freedom as if she had been Alice Creighton, or one of his sisters, said to her, “Ain’t you nobby, though!”
It is doubtful if Edith knew just what nobby meant, but she set it down as an Americanism, and knew she was complimented.
“Allow me,” Godfrey said, and offering her his arm, he conducted her to the dining-room, where his aunt and father were already assembled.
CHAPTER X.
COLONEL SCHUYLER.
He looked up in some surprise when he saw the couple come in, and the scowl between the eyes, of which Godfrey had spoken, was plainly perceptible.
“My son is getting very familiar with that girl,” was his thought; but he was very polite to Edith, who sat near to him, and during the dinner he occasionally addressed some remark to her, while his eyes wandered often to her face with a questioning look, which brought a bright color to her cheek, and made her wonder if he was thinking of the young girl who had looked at him from among the vine leaves and told him Abelard’s name.
He was not thinking of her; he was only speculating upon the rare beauty of the face beside him, and trying vaguely to recall where he had seen one like it.
“In some picture gallery; a fancy piece, I think,” was his conclusion, as with a growing interest in Edith he resolved to question his sister concerning her at the first opportunity.
As yet he had only talked with Mrs. Sinclair of the past, and all that had come to them both since their last meeting years ago. She had told him of her life and failing health, so apparent to him that, as she talked, he had involuntarily taken her thin hands in his, and wished he had come to her sooner; and then he told her of himself and his children and his wife, who, whatever she might have been while living, had died a good true woman, and gone where neither a Rossiter nor Schuyler is preferred, but only they who have His name upon their foreheads. Of Godfrey he had spoken with all a father’s pride for his only son, saying he hoped that this trip would tone him down somewhat and make him more of a man and less of a wild, teasing boy; but of Edith he made no mention. Indeed, he had not given her a thought until he saw her come in on Godfrey’s arm, when there awoke within him a strange kind of interest in her, and an inexplicable feeling that in some way she was to affect him or his. He supposed her much younger than she was, and noticing Godfrey’s evident admiration he inly resolved to leave London very soon and take the lad out of harm’s way, if indeed any harm threatened him from this beautiful woman, who fascinated and attracted him as well.
“Sister,” he said to Mrs. Sinclair, when dinner was over and they were alone together, “who is this Miss Lyle? She has a remarkable face.”
Most women have a hobby, and Mrs. Sinclair’s was Edith, of whom she was never tired of talking. She had liked her from the first, and two years of intimate acquaintance had only increased her fondness for the girl, and for hours she would sit and ring her praises if she could but find a listener. So, now, when her brother said what he did, she began at once:
“Yes, she is a remarkable person every way. She has been with me more than two years, and I like her better every day. Such a face and figure are rarely seen in this country, and her manners would become a royal princess; and yet she is only the daughter of a poor curate, who must have made a foolish marriage with one not his equal. I cannot endure the girl’s mother. I’ve never seen her but once, and then she impressed me very unfavorably, as if she was not real, you know. Edith must be like her father. He is dead, and the mother takes in lodgers.”
“Ah,” and Colonel Schuyler’s voice was indicative of disappointment, but his next question was: “How old is this girl?”
“Twenty-seven, I believe,” was the reply, “though she looks much younger.”
“Yes, she does. I thought her about twenty,” Colonel Schuyler said, and with his fear for Godfrey removed, he arose and joined the young people, who had just come through a side door into the music room.
“Edith,” Mrs. Sinclair called, “play something for my brother.”
It was Mrs. Sinclair’s right to command, Edith’s business to obey, and without a word of dissent she sat down and played, with Godfrey on one side of her and the colonel on the other, both listening with rapt attention to her fine playing, and both admiring the soft, white hands which managed the keys so skilfully.
“Edith, dear, sing that pathetic little thing,
‘I am sitting alone to-night, darling.’
You can surely manage that, it is written so low,” Mrs. Sinclair said: and rising from the couch where she had been reclining, she came into the music room, and explained to her brother: “Her voice is not strong and cannot reach the higher notes. She had a great fright when she was quite young, wasn’t it, Edith?”
“Yes,” Edith answered faintly, as she felt the iron hand closing around her throat and shutting down all power to sing even the lowest note.
“I don’t like sitting alone at night, darling. I’d rather have somebody with me, so give us your jolliest piece,” Godfrey said, making Edith laugh in spite of herself, and lifting the invisible hand, so that her voice came back again; and, at Mrs. Sinclair’s second request, she sang:
“I am sitting alone to-night, darling,
Alone in the dear old room;
And the sound of the rain,
As it falls on the pane,
Makes darker the gathering gloom.
“For I know that it falls on a grave, darling,
A grave ’neath the evergreen shade,
Where I laid you away,
One bright autumn day,
When the flowers were beginning to fade.”
Oh, how soft and low and sweet was the voice which sang the song of which Abelard Lyle had been so fond, and there was almost a tear in Godfrey’s eye, and the colonel was beginning to look very grave, when the white hands suddenly stopped and fell with a crash among the keys, while Edith gasped, “I can’t finish it; the iron fingers are on my throat, just as they were that dreadful day.”
She evidently did not quite know what she was saying, and her face was deathly pale.
“You are sick, Miss Lyle; come into the air!” Colonel Schuyler said, and leading her out upon the veranda, he made her sit down, while Mrs. Sinclair brought her smelling salts, and Godfrey hovered about disconsolately, remembering the scene in the summer-house, and wondering if she had such spells often. And, having knocked his head against his father’s, when they both stooped to pick up Edith’s handkerchief, he concluded he was de trop, and walked away, saying to himself: “I do believe he is hit real hard. Wouldn’t it be fun to call that regal creature mother!”
He laughed aloud at the idea, but did not think it would be fun, and did not quite believe in his father’s being “hit,” either; but when half an hour later he returned and found the Colonel still sitting by Edith, who had recovered herself, and was talking with a good deal of animation, he felt irritated and impatient, and went off to his room and wrote in his “Impressions of Europe,” a kind of journal he was keeping of his tour, and which he meant to show “the girls,” by way of proving that one American could go abroad and not indorse everything he saw, and make a fool of himself generally. His entry that night was in part as follows:
“Oakwood is a fine old place, with an extensive park, a smoke-house, fine stables, a dog-kennel, and seven servants, to take care of two unprotected females. Edith Lyle, aged 27, is the handsomest woman I ever saw, even in America. Her features are perfect, especially her nose, which might have been the model for the Greek Slave. Not a bit of a pug, and her eyes are large and soft and liquid, as those of the ox-eyed Juno (I like that classical allusion; it shows reading), while her ears are the tiniest I ever saw,—just like little pink sea-shells,—and her splendid brown hair, with a shade or two of yellow sunshine in it, rippling back from her smooth white brow, just exactly curly enough, and natural, too, I’ll be bound. She don’t put it up in crimps, not she. Why, what a scarecrow Alice Creighton was, though, that time I caught her with those two forks hanging down about her eyes, with a kind of clamp or horse-shoe on them. I like people natural, as I am sure Edith is. I wonder what makes her go off into a kind of white faint all of a sudden. She did it twice to-day, and I would not wonder if she was given to fits. The governor is hit, sure. I never knew him seem as much interested in any one before. The idea of his leading her into the air and then holding those salts to her nose till he strangled her,—bah!”
And, while Godfrey wrote thus in his journal, his father sat talking to Edith, and wondering to find how much she knew and how sensibly she expressed herself. Colonel Schuyler was not a man of many words, and seldom talked much to any one, but there was something about Edith which interested him greatly, and he sat by her until the twilight began to close around them, and his sister came to warn him against taking cold and exposing Edith, too. Then he went into the house, and, without exactly knowing it, felt a little disappointed when she left the room and did not come again.
Colonel Schuyler kept a journal, too, in which he occasionally jotted down the incidents of the day; and that night, after recounting his arrival at Oakwood and his grief at finding his sister so great an invalid, he added:
“She is exceedingly fortunate in having secured a most admirable person for her companion. Besides being educated, and refined, and beautiful, Miss Lyle impresses me as a remarkable woman. Yes, as a very remarkable woman.”
The next night Godfrey recorded:
“There is nothing quite so foolish as an old man in love! I wonder if he thinks she can care for him!—and yet he blushed to-day when I found him turning the leaves of her music and listening to her singing. I never knew him listen two minutes to Alice and Jule,—and no wonder, such operatic screeches as they make when Professor La Farge is there, and the boys in the street stop and mock them. Edith’s voice is the sweetest I ever heard, and so sad that it makes a chap feel for his bandanna. Why, even father told auntie that her singing made him think of poor Emily, meaning my mother! It is a bad sign when a live woman like Edith Lyle makes a man think of his dead wife. I wonder what she thinks of him! She looks as unconcerned as a block of marble; but you can’t tell what is in a woman’s mind, and widowers are awful. Why, there have been forty women after father already; but I must say he has behaved admirably thus far, and never spoken to a bonnet outside our own family, unless it were to Miss Esther Armstrong, and that is nothing. She is the Hampstead school-ma’am, and has thrashed me more than twenty times.”
In Colonel Schuyler’s journal the record was as follows:
“I wonder if my dear Emily knows how much Miss Lyle’s singing makes me think of her and her grave under the evergreen, where we did
‘Lay her away, one bright autumn day,
When the flowers were beginning to fade.’
Miss Lyle has a singularly sweet, plaintive voice, and it affects me strangely, for I did not know I cared for music. Emily never sang, and the young ladies at home make very singular sounds sometimes. It is strange about her losing her voice, or rather her power to reach the higher notes. It must have been a fearful shock of some kind, and she evidently does not like to talk of it; for, when I questioned her a little and advised her seeing a physician, she seemed disturbed and agitated, and even distressed. Dr. Malcolm at Hampstead would know just what to do for her, and she ought to have medical advice, for she has a remarkable voice,—a very remarkable voice.”
When Colonel Schuyler liked a thing, it was remarkable, and when he liked it very much, it was very remarkable; so, when he wrote what he did of Edith and her voice, he had passed upon her his highest encomium.
Four weeks went by, and he still lingered at Oakwood, and on the last day of the fourth week wrote again:
“I fully expected to have been in France before this time, but have stayed on for what reason I hardly know. It is very pleasant here, and my sister’s health is such that I dislike to leave her so soon, even though I leave her in excellent hands. Miss Edith is certainly a very remarkable person, and I am more interested in her than I have been in any one since I first met my dear Emily.”
Here the colonel paused, and laying down his pen went back in thought to the time when he was young and first met Emily Rossiter, the proud, pale, light-haired girl, whose two hundred thousand in prospect had made her a belle in society, and little as he liked to own it now that the daisies were growing above her, had commended her to his consideration. His courtship was short, and wholly void of passion or ecstasy. She knew he was a suitable match and she wished to go abroad, and accepted him readily enough, and they were married without so much as a kiss exchanged between them. He had so far unbent from his cold dignity as to hold her hand in his own while he asked her to be his wife, but as soon as her promise was given he put it back in her lap very respectfully, and said, “That hand is now mine,” and that was the nearest approach to love-making which he reached with Emily. After marriage he was scarcely more demonstrative, though always kind and considerate, and when at her father’s death it was found that her fortune was one hundred thousand instead of two, he kept it to himself if he felt any chagrin, and never in a single instance checked her extravagance, but suffered her in everything to have her way. At the last, however, when she stood face to face with death, and her life with him lay all behind, there came a change, and he could yet feel the passionate kiss which the white lips pressed upon his as they called him “dear husband.”
“Poor Emily,” he said, aloud; “we were very happy together.”
Just then, upon the terrace below there was the sound of a clear, sweet voice, which thrilled him as Emily’s never had, and Edith looked up to the windows of the room adjoining his, where Godfrey was calling to her. It was a beautiful face, and as he watched her gliding away among the shrubbery he thought how she would brighten and adorn his house at Schuyler Hill, and how proud he should be of her when his money had arrayed her in the apparel befitting his wife. Every barrier of pride and prejudice and early training had gone down before Edith Lyle’s wonderful beauty, and the proud, haughty man was ready to offer her his name and hand on one condition. Her mother could not go with her, and in taking him she must give up her family friends, if indeed she had any besides the mother. He knew nothing against Mrs. Barrett, but his sister disliked her, and that was enough, if he ignored, as he tried to think he did, the fact that she took in lodgers and sewing. Many highly respectable ladies did that, he knew, but he had a feeling that Edith’s mother was not highly respectable, and he doubted if she was a lady even. His sister, when questioned with regard to Edith’s family, had reported the mother as a pushing, curious, disagreeable woman, who assumed to be what she certainly was not.
“Edith is not like her in the least, and must inherit her natural refinement and delicacy from her father,” Mrs. Sinclair had said, and the colonel was satisfied if one side of the house was comme il faut.
As a Schuyler he could afford to stoop a little, and he felt that it was stooping to marry his sister’s hired companion. As far as position was concerned, he might as well take poor, plain Ettie Armstrong, the village schoolmistress, who in point of family was undoubtedly Edith’s equal. There was, however, this difference. The people at home could know nothing of Edith’s antecedents, save that she was an English girl and the daughter of a curate; while another fact, which outweighed all else, was her exceeding great beauty and queenly style, which, with proper surroundings and influence, would place her on the highest wave of society. And he was ready to give her the surroundings and the influence, and felt a thrill of exultant pride as he saw her in fancy at the head of his table and moving through his handsome rooms, herself the handsomest appendage there.
“I may as well settle it at once,” he thought, and the next day he found his opportunity and took it, with what success the reader will learn from a page in Edith’s diary.
CHAPTER XI.
EDITH’S DIARY.
Oakwood, July 15th, 18—.
Am I dreaming, or is it a reality that Col. Schuyler has asked me to be his wife? He says he thinks I am more beautiful than any woman he has ever seen, and that I would make such a rare gem for his house at Hampstead, and he would surround me with every possible luxury. And in his voice, usually so cold and calm and impassioned, there was a little trembling, and his forehead flushed as he went on to state the one condition on which he would do me this honor:
“My mother must have no part in my grandeur! She must remain here. If necessary, money should be freely given for her needs, but she could not live with me!”
Poor mother, with all her planning and her dreams of my brilliant future she never once thought that when the chance came she would be left out and have neither part nor lot in the question! What would she say if she knew it, and what will she say when I tell her I refused him? For I did, and told him it could never be. For a moment, though, weak woman that I am, I was tempted to end this life of dependence and poverty, and take what he offered me; not his love: he never hinted at such an emotion, and I think that feeling is rare in such natures as his. I doubt if he felt it for the Lady Emily, whom he married in his May time, and surely now in his October he has no place for foolishness of that kind. He does not love me, but he admires my face and form, and would no doubt be very kind and careful of me, just as he would be kind to and careful of a favorite horse whose looks depended on such treatment. He would hang upon me jewels rare, with silks and laces and satins, and I could wear them and feel my heart break afresh each time I looked from my window across the lawn to that grave under the evergreen where Abelard is lying. I should hear him discussed, and with Colonel Schuyler stand by the mound and listen to a story I know so well, and loathe myself for the lie I was acting, for if I was there as Colonel Schuyler’s wife, my life would be one tissue of falsehood and deceit. He, of all men in the world, would not take me if he knew the truth, and during that interval when I hesitated I had resolved not to tell him! I would go to him, if I went at all, as Edith Lyle the maiden, and not Edith Lyle the widow. But only for an instant, thank Heaven, did the tempter have me in his control ere I cast him behind me with the resolve that whatever else I might do, I would be frank with the man whom I made up my mind to marry, and as I had not made up my mind to marry Colonel Schuyler, I did not tell him who I was. I only declined his offer, and said it could not be, and when his remark that I did not know what I was doing angered me, I burst out impetuously:
“I do know what I am doing. I am refusing a match which the world,—your world, would say was far above me; but, Colonel Schuyler, poor as I am, and humble in position, I am rich in the feeling which will not let me sell myself for a name and a home. And if I accepted you it would be only for that. I respect you. I believe you to be sincere in your offer, and that you would try to make me happy, but you could not do it unless I loved you, and I do not; besides——”
Here he stopped me, and took both my hands in his, and seemed almost tender and lovable as he said
“Edith, I did not suppose you could love me so soon, but I hoped you might grow to it when you found how proud I was of you, and how I would try to make you happy.”
“Colonel Schuyler,” I interrupted him, “you have talked of your pride in me, and your admiration of me, but you have said nothing of love. Answer me now, please. Do you love me?”
He wanted to say yes, I know, for his chin quivered, and there was in his face the look of one fighting with some principle hard to be overcome. In his case it was the principle of truth and right, and it conquered every other feeling, and compelled him to answer:
“Perhaps not as you in your youth count love. Our acquaintance has been too short for that; but I can and I will; only give me a chance. Don’t decide now. I will not take it as a decision if you do. Wait till my return from the Continent, and then tell me what you will do. I had hoped to take you with me, and thought that the glories of Rome, seen by me twice before, would gain new interest with your eyes beside me. But my sister needs you; stay with her during my absence, and try to like me a little, and when I come back I know I can say to you, ‘Edith Lyle, I love you.’”
I was touched and softened by his manner quite as much as by what he said, and I replied to him, gently:
“Even then my answer must be the same. My love was buried years ago. I have a story to tell you of the past.”
Again those dreadful fingers clutched my throat as I tried to tell him of Abelard, and my dead baby, buried I knew not where. My voice was gone, and my face, which was deadly pale, frightened him I know, for he led me to the window and pushed my hair from my brow and said to me:
“Edith, please do not distress yourself with any tale of the past. You say you have loved and lost that love, and let that suffice. I suspected something of the kind, but you are not less desirable to me. I have loved and lost, and in that respect we are even; so let nothing in the past deter you from giving me the answer I so much desire when I return to Oakwood. Godfrey is coming this way. I hear his whistle; so good-night, and Heaven bless you, Edith.”
He pressed my hand and left the room just as Godfrey entered the door in another direction, singing softly when he saw me:
“She sat by the door one cold afternoon,
To hear the wind blow and look at the moon;
So pensive was Edith, my dear, darling Edith.”
He did not get any farther, for something in his light badinage jarred upon my feelings just then, and assuming a severe dignity, I said:
“You mistake the name. I am not Edith. I am Miss Lyle.”
He looked surprised an instant, and then, with a comical smile and a shaking down of his pants, he said:
“I beg your pardon, Miss Lyle. I meant Kathleen O’Moore, of course, but seeing you at the moment I made a mistake in the name, and no wonder, dazed as I am with a letter just received from Alice, who hopes I shall return from my foreign travel greatly improved in mind, and taste, and manners, as if the latter could be improved. She sent her picture too. Would you like to see it?”
He passed me the carte-de-visite, and I saw the likeness of a girl who he said was only sixteen, but whom I should have taken for twenty, at least, judging from the dress and the expression of the face, which I did not like. It was too supercilious, if not insolent, to suit me, while the turned-up nose added to the look. And still there was a style about her which marked her as what is called a “high-bred city girl,” and I have no doubt she will eventually become a belle, with her immense fortune and proud, arrogant demeanor.
“What do you think of it?” Godfrey asked; and feeling sure that with regard to her his feelings could not be wounded, I answered:
“I do not quite like her expression, and she looks too old for you.”
“Good! I’ll tell her that some time when she is nagging me unmercifully,” Godfrey said, adding: “I had a letter from Jule too, with her photograph, and also one of our house and grounds. This is Julia.”
It was the face of a brunette, dark, handsome, but proud and imperious, and I was glad that she was not to be my step-daughter.
“Jule is handsome, except her ears, which are as big as a palm-leaf fan,” Godfrey said, and I replied:
“Yes, she is handsome, and will make a brilliant woman.”
“This is our home,” he continued, and he put into my hand a large photograph of the house on Schuyler Hill, and a considerable portion of the grounds.
There were the tops of the evergreens, and there was a white stone shining through the green, and I said to Godfrey,
“Whose monument is that?”
“That? Let me see. Why, that is young Lyle’s, the man who saved my life. You remember I told you about him? Mother’s is farther on and out of sight.”
How faint and sick I felt to have Abelard’s grave thus brought near to me, and there was a blur before my eyes, which, for a moment, prevented me from seeing distinctly. Then it cleared away, and I was able to examine the picture and see how the grounds had been improved since that morning when Abelard’s blood was on the grass where now the flowers were growing. It was a fine place, and as I looked at it and thought it had been offered me, ay, might yet be mine, if I would take it, did I feel any regret for having refused it? None whatever. If I were to tell Col. Schuyler everything I should never go there, and if I were to go without telling him my life would be one of wretchedness and hatred of myself. No, better bear with poverty and servitude than live a greater lie than I am living now. So I gave the picture back to Godfrey, and bidding him good-night, came up to my room, where I could be alone, to think over the events of that eventful day.