Julia was now nearly twenty-two, and very handsome it was thought, though her beauty was of that dark, bold, dashing style which I did not admire. Emma, with her paleness and light brown hair, suited me better; for there was a sweet, gentle expression in her face, while in grace of manner and form she far excelled her haughty sister, who patronized her generally.
Since their coming out neither of the young ladies had been much at home, and we missed the style, and dash, and city airs which they used to bring us, and had only Rosamond Barton and Mrs. Schuyler to admire and copy,—except, indeed, on the rare occasions when Gertie was allowed to pass her vacations in Hampstead. I say allowed, for the colonel managed so adroitly that she never came to Schuyler Hill when Godfrey was there or expected, but spent her vacations elsewhere in happy ignorance of the real reason for her banishment.
And so we did not see her often in our quiet town; but when we had her with us it was a season of rejoicing, and we made the most of it. How I used to wait and listen for the rapid step and the clear, ringing voice, which always set my heart throbbing, and did me so much good. I did not wonder that everybody loved her, from old Mrs. Vandeusenhisen in the Hollow, to Tom Barton on the Ridge, and when the former brought me fresh eggs for my breakfast, and told me with a beaming face that “her young lady came home last night looking handsomer than ever,” I knew she meant Gertie Westbrooke; and when Tom Barton looked in and said, with a falter in his voice, “She went this morning,” I knew that he meant Gertie, too, and pitied him for the hope he was cherishing, and which I was sure would never be fulfilled.
Since the memorable day when Mary Rogers spoke so boldly for the child whom she would not have compromised by so much as a breath of gossip, Tom Barton had kept his promise, and guarded the little girl as carefully as if she had been his sister, until she ceased to be a little girl, and he saw her in all the bright loveliness of sixteen, and then Tom went down before her charms, and asked her to quit school, and be his wife, and live with him at the Ridge, and snub Miss Julia Schuyler as she had been snubbed by her.
“No, Mr. Barton, I cannot be your wife. No girl would be that, if she loved you ever so much,” Gertie had answered, fearlessly, while Tom blushed painfully, and knew just what she meant, and swore he would reform, and not look so much like a walking beer-barrel.
And he did try to reform, and took the pledge, and broke it in three weeks, and had the delirium tremens, and saw all manner of snakes twisting themselves around Gertie Westbrooke, on whom he called piteously in his agony. Then he took the pledge again, and kept it, and gradually the high color left his face, and his figure began to assume a better shape, and his clothes were not so tight, and he came to see me so often that the meddlesome ones in town wondered if old Ettie Armstrong could be foolish enough to think that boy wanted anything of her!
“Why, she is forty at least,” good Mrs. Smithers said, averring that she knew, because the day I was born their bees swarmed, and her husband broke his neck trying to saw off the limb where they had settled.
Of course such evidence was unanswerable, but as I knew just how old I was, and why Tom Barton visited me so often, I did not care to contradict the story of the bees, and I let Tom Barton come whenever he pleased to talk of his “best girl,” as he called her, and to keep him from the “Golden Eagle,” the low tavern where he had slipped so often.
At last, however, Gertie’s education was finished, and she came home to stay, and the colonel welcomed her kindly, and thought how beautiful she was, and felt his blood stir a little when she raised herself on tiptoe and kissed him as a matter of course. Julia never did that and Emma but seldom, while Edith kept most of her kisses now for the two-year-old boy Arthur, so that the cold, reserved man was not much used to kisses of late, and felt the touch of Gertie’s lips for hours, and caught himself contrasting her with Alice Creighton, whom he had last seen so elaborately dressed with powder on her face and every hair seeming to stand on end. But thirty thousand a year covers many defects, and Alice was still the colonel’s ideal of a daughter-in-law when he welcomed Gertie home.
She had been there three months, and on the June morning of which I write I was going up to call upon her for the first time since her return. I found her in the garden, in her big sun-hat and heavy gloves, cutting and arranging flowers with which to decorate the house, for a party of young people was coming from New York that day, and everything and everybody was in a great state of expectancy. During the last year and a half Robert Macpherson had been in Europe looking after his inheritance, which by the death of some one had come indisputably to him at last. Several times he had written to Godfrey urging him to cross the ocean with his sisters and Miss Creighton, and visit him in his Highland home; and as nothing could please the young ladies better, the party had sailed for Europe in time to keep the Easter festival at Glenthorpe, Robert’s handsome country-seat. But they had now returned to New York, and Robert Macpherson was with them, and for a week or more they had been stopping with Miss Rossiter and waiting for Rosamond Barton, who was to accompany them to Hampstead. It was two years since Godfrey was graduated, and since that time he had been studying his profession in the city until he went with his sisters for a short vacation to Europe.