She did not get any further, for the voice which made her start as it said:
“Edith, my dear, whose is all that remarkable-looking baggage down in the hall which I stumbled over just now?”
Colonel Schuyler had ridden round to the stable, and giving his horse to the care of the groom, had entered the house through the side hall, where Mrs. Barrett’s numerous boxes and bundles had been deposited by the express man, who, as the lady was not in sight, made a little charge against the colonel for bringing it from the station. Mrs. Barrett believed in having things secure, and in addition to locks and hasps had tied her boxes with cords and ropes, which, with the marks of age and travel, gave them a “remarkable appearance” indeed, and the colonel stumbled over them and struck his ankle against the sharp corner of one of them, and he was suffering from the pain when he put the question to his wife, without a thought that the obnoxious baggage was part and parcel of his mother-in-law, who sat a little in the shadow, and whom he did not see till Edith said to him:
“Why, it must be mother’s baggage. I did not know it was here. Howard, see! here’s mother!—come all the way from England!”
Edith was as near hysterical as she well could be and not break down entirely, while the colonel was Confounded, and amazed, and indignant, altogether. When he knocked his ankle against the box and saw the bits of rope, he had thought of the Lyles, and wondered if it could be they were claiming relationship so soon; and now it was even worse than the Lyles,—it was a mother-in-law whom he did not like, and to whom he had sent larger sums of money every year for the sake of keeping her where he wished her to remain. But she was here in his house, and had evidently come to stay, and he must not be rude to her for Edith’s sake; so he made a great effort to be civil, and said:
“Ah, yes,—your mother! Mrs. Barrett, how do you do? I am,—yes, I am sure I am very much,—yes,—taken by surprise. When did you come? You must be very tired. Edith, my dear, hadn’t you better show her to her room?”
He had made his speech, and, anxious to be rid of her, asked Edith to take her away; and Edith, who breathed more freely now that the worst was over, arose, and bidding her mother follow her, conducted her to the small but pleasant room adjoining Gertie’s and communicating with it by means of a door. To Edith it seemed that her mother was safer near to Gertie, while Mrs. Barrett was delighted with the arrangement, especially as Gertie signified her willingness to have the door kept open when Mrs. Barrett liked.
It was known in the kitchen by this time that the soiled, jaded little woman with the queer-looking baggage was Mrs. Schuyler’s mother, and among the servants there was much talk and speculation concerning her. Had she come to stay? was she expected? was the colonel glad to see her? and what was she, anyway? Mrs. Tiffe knew all about the lodgers and the plain sewing, while the lower grade of servants knew a great deal more, and had among them a tradition that Mrs. Schuyler’s mother once sat under an umbrella in the streets of London, and sold gingerbread, and apples, and peanuts, and boot-lacings. And now she was here to be treated like Mrs. Schuyler herself, and John sniffed a little contemptuously when he went in to wait upon the family at dinner.
But there was nothing to sniff at in the highly respectable-looking woman, whom Gertie had helped to dress in her best black silk, with the widow’s cap set jauntily above the snow-white puffs of hair, and the air of quiet dignity which Mrs. Barrett knew so well how to assume, even when unusually embarrassed as she was now, with so much grandeur and display around her, and Edith mistress of it all. Truly, she did a good thing when she withheld the letter which would so surely have changed her daughter’s life, she thought, when she was alone in her room that night, and free to recall the chain of events which had resulted in her being there.
Edith, too, was thinking, and her thoughts kept her awake until long after midnight, when, as she was about falling away to sleep, she was startled by the sound of a groan, which seemed to come from her mother’s room, and a moment after Gertie knocked at her door, saying: