“But, Aunt Christine, he says she is a lady, the daughter of a clergyman,” Emma said, soothingly,—hers the only voice raised in defence of the intruder,—the interloper,—the adventuress,—as Miss Rossiter termed the expected bride.
Emma’s heart had throbbed painfully at the thought of a new mother, but it was natural for her to defend whatever she believed abused, and she spoke up for the unknown Edith, until Julia, who had been reading Godfrey’s letter, uttered a cry of bitter anger and scorn, and said, sternly:
“Hush, Em, you don’t know what you are talking about; a lady, indeed, and the daughter of a clergyman! A woman of forty, with a limp, and glass eye, and cracked voice, is a nice mother to bring us!”
“A wha-at?” Miss Rossiter gasped, while Alice and Emma both exclaimed simultaneously: “A limp and a glass eye! What do you mean? Let me see;” and looking over Julia’s shoulder Alice read aloud what Godfrey had written.
Godfrey had said, “The sight of her will take your breath away,” and in fact the very thought of her did that, and for full a minute after the letter was read there was not a sound heard in the room where the indignant and confounded ladies sat, each staring blankly at the other, and neither able to speak or move. Miss Rossiter was the first to stir, and with a moaning cry, “I cannot bear it,” she went into violent hysterics, and Martha was called in, and the poor lady was taken to her room, where she tried, one after another, every bottle of medicine in her closet, but to no effect; even the Crown Bitters failed, and she sank upon the bed, shivering with cold, and asking for shawls and blankets on that August day, with a temperature of ninety degrees in the shade.
Perhaps Miss Rossiter herself had not been aware how much Colonel Howard was to her, or how hard it would be to see another woman there in her sister’s place. She had too much sense to believe she would ever fill it, yet the first smart had been that of disappointment and a sense of wrong to herself, while the second was a keen pang of mortification and anger, that if he must choose another he had chosen that caricature on womanhood described so graphically by Godfrey. It is true she did not quite believe him literally. Neither did his sisters, who sat in the library with white faces and tearful eyes. Julia was wrathful and defiant, and was already in a state of fierce rebellion against the woman of forty with the crack in her voice. So much she believed, but the limp and glass eye were too thoroughly Godfrey’s to be trusted.
“Probably the woman is lame and wears glasses,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak at all, “and perhaps she squints, but I have no faith in the glass eye. Godfrey made that up. Father is not the man to marry such a monster, and then expect us to pay all due deference to her. The idea of my deferring to such a woman. I hate her. I’ll poison her, the wretch!”
Julia Schuyler was terrible in her wrath, and with that expression in her flashing eyes and about the white quivering lips, she looked equal to anything, and Edith might well have trembled could she have seen the dark-faced girl, who, with clenched fists, threatened to poison her. Julia would not of course acknowledge that she really had murder in her heart, but she felt outraged, and insulted, and disgraced, and as if she must do something to avert the horrible evil threatening them all. But what could she do? To oppose her will to her father’s was like trying to move a mountain of stone with her puny strength. The mountain would not be hurt, and only she would suffer from the attempt.
There was no help, no hope, and when her anger had spent itself she burst into tears and sobbed passionately, just as Emma had done from the first, but with this difference, she cried from wrath and indignant mortification, while Emma’s tears were more for the dead mother whose place was to be filled, and whose death it seemed to her now had only been yesterday.
The governess, who knew that remark of any kind from herself would be resented as impertinent, wisely said nothing, while Alice, too, was silent, except as she occasionally said to Julia, “It is too bad, and I am sorry for you; sorry for us all.”