Georgie could not withstand that appeal, and when Mrs. Burton tried to dissuade her from going, she paid no heed whatever. Indeed, she scarcely heard what her mother was saying, for her thoughts were far away with a little golden-haired child, for whom she stowed away in her trunk the chocolates asked for, and the waxen doll and the picture book and pretty puzzle found that day at the shop in the little town near Oakwood.
Jack met her in Buffalo as he had said he would, and took her to the hotel for the night, and, in the privacy of her room she said things she never would have said had there been other ears to listen than those of Jack,—faithful, trusty Jack, who knew that of her which no other living creature knew. Alone with him she needed no disguise, and her voice was not as soft and sweet and bird-like as it always was at Oakwood; but it sounded much like any ordinary voice, as she asked after Annie, and if it really was necessary to send for her and compel her to take that long, tiresome journey.
“Perhaps it was not necessary; Aunt Luna and I could take care of her, of course; but, Georgie, she wanted you so badly, and I thought maybe”—here Jack’s chin quivered a little, and he walked to the window, and stood with his back to Georgie—“I thought you might want to see her. It’s two years almost since you did see her. And mother’s being dead, and all, we feel so lonely and broken up, and don’t know what to do. A man’s nothing with a little child like Annie. I say, Georgie,”—and Jack suddenly faced about—“I thought maybe you’d stay with us a spell. We want a head; somebody to take the lead. Won’t you, Georgie? It is not like Oakwood, I know; and you’ll feel the change; but it is a great deal better than it used to be when you were there; for Annie’s sake, maybe, you’ll do it, and I’ll work like a horse for you both. I’m getting good wages now,—better than ever before. I can give you some luxuries, and all the comforts, I guess. Mother thought you would. She told me to tell you it was your duty——”
Jack stopped suddenly, arrested by something in the expression of his sister’s face, which he did not like. She had listened in silence, and with a good deal of softness in her eyes, until he spoke of her staying with him. Then there was a sudden lifting of her eyebrows, and she shot at him a look of surprise that he should presume to propose such a thing. When he reached his mother’s message touching her duty, her face flushed with resentment, and she broke out impulsively:
“Don’t go any further, Jack. You can work upon my feelings when you talk of Annie’s wanting me, but when you try to preach duty to me, you fail of your object at once. I parted company with duty and principle, and everything of that sort, years ago; and you, who know me so well, ought to know better than to try and reach me through any such channel. I am going to see Annie, to do what I can for her, and then return to Oakwood. The kind of life I have led there, since leaving you, has unfitted me for—for—”
“For our four rooms on the second floor of a tenement house,” Jack said, a little bitterly, and then there was silence between them; and Georgie sat, thinking of Oakwood, with all its luxurious elegance, and Jack’s presumption in supposing she would voluntarily give it up for those four rooms on the second floor, with their plain furniture and still plainer surroundings.
And while she was thus employed, Jack, who had come back from the window, was leaning upon the mantel and intently looking at the beautiful woman with marks of culture and high breeding in every turn of her graceful head, and motion of her body,—the woman whose charms were enhanced by all the appliances of wealth, and who looked a very queen born to adorn some home as elegant and beautiful as herself. She would be out of place in the four rooms which constituted his home, he thought; and yet her natural place was there, and in his heart he felt for a moment as if he despised her for her selfishness and lack of all that was womanly and right. But she was his sister. They had called the same man father; they had been children together, and though he was the younger of the two, he had always assumed a kind of protecting air toward the little girl whose beauty he admired so much, and whom he once thought so sweet and lovely.
As she grew toward womanhood, and her marvellous beauty expanded day by day until it became the remark of even passers-by, who saw her at the window, he worshipped her as a being infinitely superior to himself, and when a great and crushing sorrow came upon her early in life, he stood bravely by her, shielding her as far as possible from disgrace, and took her to his own fireside, and, boy though he was in years, told her she was welcome then and forever, and overtasked his strength and gave up his hopes of an education, that she might be warmed and fed and clothed, even in dainty apparel which suited her brilliant beauty so well. Latterly their lives had lain apart from each other, hers at Oakwood, where, the petted idol of her indulgent aunt, she had no wish ungratified; and his in the noisy city of the West, where, at the head of a family, he toiled for his mother and the little Annie who was like a sister to him, and whom he loved with a deeper love than he had given to Georgie, inasmuch as she was more worthy of his love. His mother was now dead; Annie was a cripple; and in his loneliness and perplexity his heart went after Georgie as the proper one to help him. She had acceded to his wishes in part, but refused him where he had the greatest need, and his heart was very sore as he stood looking at her and thinking of all that was past in her life, and of the possible future.
She suspected his thoughts, and with her old, witching smile and manner, arose and stood by him, and parting his hair with her white hand, said coaxingly:
“Don’t be angry with me, Jack. I cannot bear that, for you are the best, the truest friend I have in the world, and I love you so much, and will do anything for you but that; I cannot stay with you. I should neither be happy myself nor make you so; and then my remaining in Chicago would seriously interfere with my plans, which may result in bringing us all together beneath one roof. Trust me, please, and believe I am acting for the best.”