Edith Lyle

The voyage, which, owing to adverse winds, had been unusually long, was over, and the names of “Col. Schuyler, lady and maid” were registered at the hotel, where they were to stop for a week or more before going to their home in Hampstead. Macpherson and Godfrey were there also, the latter showing the city to his friend, who cared only for the studios and galleries of paintings. After her husband’s reproof Edith had made no attempt to see Gertie Westbrooke, but she had inquired for her every day and sent many delicacies to her, and once, in the distance, she had seen her shawl wrapped around a little figure which was leaning over the railing, with masses of bright hair falling beneath the scarlet hood, and to herself she said: “That must be Gertie Westbrooke.”

But further than that she knew nothing of the child, until she heard Godfrey talking to his father about the cottage Mrs. Rogers was to have.

“Yes, certainly, I’ll ask Mrs. Schuyler,” Colonel Schuyler said to some suggestion of Godfrey, and then added, with a laugh: “It seems, Edith, that this child in whom you were so much interested is to be my tenant, or rather Godfrey’s, as the cottage is his. He, too, has taken a most unaccountable fancy to the girl, and as I have ordered your suite of rooms to be wholly refurnished, Godfrey has suggested that we let this Mrs. Rogers have as much of the old furniture as will be suitable for that cottage. She has everything to buy, of course, and not much means, I dare say.”

This was just like Colonel Schuyler. He was very generous with his pride, and he really wished to make some amends for his conduct with regard to Gertie and the shawl. Ever since that affair he had felt that he might have acted hastily, while Edith’s meek acquiescence with his wishes touched him in a tender point, and now, when the Rogers people came into notice again, he seized the opportunity to do them a favor if possible.

“They can think they are renting the furniture with the house,” he said; and as Edith signified her approval without in the least suspecting what cottage it was which was to receive the furniture from Schuyler Hill, the matter was decided, and Mrs. Rogers was told that she would find the house partly furnished, a fact which gave her much satisfaction.

Since the failure of the bank, money had been scarce with her, and as she could not afford to remain long in New York, even at a cheap boarding-house, she started for Hampstead the third day after landing. Godfrey’s telegram had been received by Perry, the agent, but there was no time for repairs, nor were they needed, as the house had been well kept up and was clean as soap and water and the hands of the late occupant could make it. At the time of refurnishing Edith’s rooms at Schuyler Hill the old furniture had been stored away, some in the servants’ rooms, some in the attic, and some in the barn, but it was brought together according to the colonel’s orders, and deposited in the cottage, where it lay waiting the arrival of the new tenants, concerning whom there was much speculation in our little town.

I was on my way from school,—for I was still the village schoolmistress,—and, seeing the door open and people moving about inside, I passed through the gate, and entered the rooms, where I had last seen Heloise Fordham. People called it “Vine Cottage,” it was so entirely covered with vines and creepers, and surrounded with flowering shrubs. And a very pretty place it was, too; for, since it had been Godfrey’s, he had taken great pains to keep it up, and beautify the yard and garden, both of which were fashioned a little after the grounds at Schuyler Hill.

Such a place could not go begging for tenants, but for some reason it had been vacant for five or six weeks, when Godfrey’s telegram was received, bidding Perry get it in readiness for Mrs. Rogers. As we have seen, Perry obeyed orders, and, in spite of the wry faces of the young ladies and Miss Christine’s remonstrance, he collected the articles named in Colonel Schuyler’s dispatch, and carried them to the cottage, where I found them scattered about promiscuously, a half-worn velvet carpet here, a marble table and stand there, and in another place a beautiful rosewood bedstead, bearing the marks of the boy Godfrey’s jack-knife, and a handsome bureau, both too tall to stand in any room except the parlor, where they were not wanted.

“What is all this?” I asked, as I stepped over oil-cloth, and hearth-rug, and curtains. “Who is going to live here?”

“A Mrs. Rogers, cousin to the new madame’s waiting-maid,” Perry replied, with a certain intonation in his voice, which showed me that he had taken his cue from the house on the Hill, and was not inclined to regard with favor the cousin of “madame’s waiting-maid.”

“When is Mrs. Rogers expected?” I asked, and he replied:

“She may come any time, but the colonel will not be here for two weeks or more. There’s the old Harry to pay up there,” and he nodded toward the house on the Hill. “I tell you, Miss Rossiter and Miss Schuyler is ridin’ their highest horses.”

It was not for me to question him, and so I made him no reply, but improved the opportunity of going through the house where my old friend, Heloise Fordham, used to live, and where I had bidden her good-by with promises to care for that grave on the hillside. And I had cared for it regularly at first, and then as years went by and she neither came to see my work nor sent me any word, I gradually began to grow a little lax in my labors, and now it was months since I had thought of it. But I remembered it that morning when I stood in Heloise’s old room, where I had seen her with the tears in her eyes and the tremor in her voice as she talked to me of Abelard, who “was not her beau,” and yet very dear to her. There by the window she had stood and cut the long curl of hair and given me the vase for Abelard’s grave.

“And where is the young girl?” I asked myself, “and why has she never written me a line in all these years?”

Then as I thought of the neglected grave, I said, aloud:

“I’ll go there to-morrow and see what I can do. It must be sadly overgrown by this time.”

But it rained the next day and the next, and so I did not go, but came each day by the cottage, where at last I saw the new tenants, Mrs. Rogers and little Gertie Westbrooke.

The child was in the garden close by the fence, and glanced up at me with a look which made me stop instantly to gaze at her, while the smile which broke over her face and shone in her blue eyes took me straight through the gate to her side, and before I knew at all what I was doing or why I was doing it, I was talking to her and seeming to myself like one who walks in a dream and sees there things which he has known and seen before.

Surely that smile, which came and went so frequently, and that voice so clear, and sweet, and ringing, were familiar to me, and I said to the child:

“Have you been here before?”

“No, ma’am; I was born in London. I never was in America until now, and yet it’s funny that this place seems like home, and my room is just what I thought it would be. Won’t you walk in, please, and see auntie?” she said, and I followed her into the cottage, where she presented me to the woman there with all the air and grace of one born to the purple.

“Auntie, Mrs. Rogers; this lady is,—I don’t believe I know your name.”

And she turned inquiringly to me.

I told her who I was, and then inspected Mrs. Rogers curiously, and wondered to find her so different from Gertie. She spoke very well and appeared well, but showed at once the class to which she belonged; nor did she make pretensions to anything else than she really was,—a plain, sensible woman, who had come to America to better herself and be near Norah, her cousin.

She wanted work, she said, and asked what the probabilities were of her obtaining employment in Hampstead, either as plain sewer or dressmaker, or both. Of course, I heard about the lost money in the bank, and received the impression that she had seen better days. Everybody who comes from the old country has, but that was natural, and I liked her on the whole, and thought her a woman of great tact and observation, and promised her my plain sewing and my influence if she pleased me.

She was very anxious to send Gertie to school at once, she said, and the next day she sat in my school-room in her dainty dress of blue, with her white-ruffled apron, and her auburn hair rippling all over her finely-shaped, intellectual head. I walked home with her that night, and found Mrs. Rogers in a great deal of trouble about the bedstead and the bureau, which seemed so out of place in the cottage.

“Where did they come from? Did the other tenants use them?” she asked, and as I did not see fit to enlighten her, she finally determined to store them away in the woodshed until Mr. Godfrey came. “I am able to furnish a few rooms decently well myself,” she said; and three days after, when I called on my way from school, Gertie took me to her room and asked me how I liked it.

It was the same Heloise Fordham used to occupy, and it seemed as if she was there again at my side, as I stood looking at the pretty ingrain carpet and the single bed, with its snow-white draperies, the low chair near the window, and the table for Gertie’s work, and the swinging-shelf for her books.

“It is a pretty room,” I said, “and it looks as it did when Heloise was here.”

“Who?” Gertie asked, sweeping her hair back from her forehead, just as I had seen Heloise do so many times. “Who did you say used to be here?”

“Heloise Fordham, a young girl about my age, or a little older, whose mother occupied this cottage twelve or thirteen years ago,” I replied; and Gertie rejoined:

“Why, that is my name, too!”

“Is it?” I asked, and she rejoined:

“Yes, Gertrude Heloise. I write it Gertrude H. for short. Don’t you know?”

I did not know, and I had no suspicion of that which, had I known it then, would have taken my senses away, I verily believe.

“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Was she pretty, and good, and happy? I like to know who has occupied my room before me. At Stonewark, where we were a few weeks last summer, they said my room was haunted by a girl who killed herself for love. Auntie did not wish me to sleep there. She’s a bit superstitious, but I was not afraid. I liked it, and tried to keep awake nights to see the ghost which threw itself out of the window just at midnight, but I always went to sleep before it came. Where is Heloise, now?”

I did not know, but, questioned by the eager little girl, I told a part of the story, and then, as she grew interested and begged for “the whole, the very whole,” I told it her, thinking there was no harm in telling, as no one could be wronged. Heloise was either married or dead, the latter probably, or she would have written to me, and so it was no matter if I did tell her story and Abelard’s to the child who listened so intently, her eyes filling with tears, which rolled down her cheeks when I spoke of the dead man lying on the grass, his face all wet with blood and a withered white rose pressed inside his flannel shirt. I suppose she cried for him, and to a certain extent I dare say she did, though her first words were: “Poor fellow, I’m so glad he didn’t let Godfrey be killed.”

This was the first time she had mentioned Godfrey to me, and as I had the impression that she did not know him, I was going to ask her about it when she said, eagerly:

“And he was the young girl’s lover, and she only fifteen; that’s funny. I’m twelve, and I should not think of having a beau; but go on and tell me more, and what they did with him, and what she did, and all of them.”

I told her what they did, and how for a day and a night the body lay in the parlor below, and where they buried it, and about the monument and my promise to keep the grave clean and nice.

“And have you done it?” Gertie asked, her cheeks like roses and her eyes as bright as stars.

I confessed to recent neglect, and said I had not been there once during the summer.

“Then it’s awful by this time,” Gertie said. “Let’s go and fix it to-morrow, you and I, will you?”

I promised that I would, and then, as it was growing dark, I bade her good-night, she saying to me in a whisper:

“I’ll not tell auntie about that girl who used to have my room, because if I did I’d have to tell about the body which lay in the parlor, and she would surely see his ghost. She’s afraid of ’em, you know. I guess that class always are.”

She spoke of her auntie’s belonging to a class different from herself as naturally as possible, and still with no shadow of contempt or disrespect in her voice. Mrs. Rogers had always taught her that though she must expect nothing from others on account of it, she was superior to people like herself and Norah, and Gertie accepted it as a fact, not knowing exactly whether it was the forty pounds a year or the big house where she used to live, or the dead mother, or the father who would not own her, or the grandmother she had never seen, which gave her the precedence.

The next day, true to my promise, I took Gertie to the Schuyler Cemetery and showed her Abelard’s grave.

“James A. Lyle, born in Alnwick, England, 18—. Died June —, 18—, aged 23 years. Honor to the dead who died to save another’s life,” she read aloud, kneeling on the grass before the monument which marked his resting-place.

“Oh, how nice that is. ‘Honor to the dead who died to save another’s life,’ and that other was Mr. Godfrey,” she said. “And Colonel Schuyler put it here. I like him now better than I did. I thought he was proud and cold, but there must be good in him. Why, it’s a splendid stone, and must have cost as much as,—as much as forty pounds.”

Her income was her maximum for an unheard-of sum, and she stood gazing admiringly at the stone, while her busy tongue went on.

“And this is a pretty yard, with all those old Schuylers buried here. I mean, old really, you know. I don’t say it for bad nicknames. They were all old. ‘Emily, beloved wife of Colonel Howard Schuyler, aged 36,’ is the youngest of them all, and she was awful old. That must be Colonel Schuyler’s first wife, Mr. Godfrey’s mother. Was she as pretty, I wonder, as the new lady is? No, you have not kept the grave up nice; that girl would feel badly if she saw it. Let’s go straight to work and pull up the nasty weeds first; and look, here’s a clump of lovely forget-me-nots down in the grass, and sweet English violets.”

She talked so fast and went so rapidly from one thing to another that I had no chance to say a word, but stood watching her silently as she worked with a will, pulling up the weeds and digging about the flowers which had been making a faint struggle for life in the grass which impeded their growth. Whether she was working for the sake of the young girl Heloise, or because it was Godfrey’s life which had been saved by the necessity for that grave, I could not tell. She talked of both, and when her task was done, and flushed and heated with exercise, she sat down to rest, she said:

“There, Miss Heloise Fordham will feel better now, I hope, and I wouldn’t wonder if Mr. Godfrey liked me to be kind to the man who saved his life. Was she very pretty, Miss Armstrong?”

I knew she meant Heloise, although her last remark had been of Godfrey, and I replied:

“Yes, very pretty. Do you know you look a little like her, only your hair is auburn, and hers was golden brown, while your eyes are blue and hers were a brownish gray.”

“Do I? Am I like her? Am I pretty? Mr. Godfrey said I was,” she exclaimed, her face lighting up with a glow which made her, as I thought, the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

“You have spoken of Mr. Godfrey several times,” I said. “Where did you know him?”

“Why, on the ship and in the cab, and in the church when his new mother was married, and everywhere,” she replied; and then, by dint of a few questions adroitly put, I heard nearly all she had to tell of Godfrey, who had stared at her in the cab, and kissed her flowers in church, and herself on shipboard.

“But he’ll never do that again,” she said. “I told him it wasn’t proper, and he said he wouldn’t, until—until—” her face grew crimson as she continued,—“until, I could say I thought him a perfect gentleman, with no slang or nonsense, and then he is to kiss me again, but that will never be, I reckon.”

She stuck up the toe of her little foot and looked demurely at it while she settled the kissing affair with so much gravity, and I,—well, my thoughts did leap into the future and then leaped back again when I remembered Alice Creighton and the proud girls at Schuyler Hill. As if divining something of my thoughts, Gertie asked abruptly: “Do you know Mr. Godfrey’s sisters? He told me he had two.”

“Yes, I know them; they were my pupils last year, when their governess left suddenly,” I said; and she continued:

“Are they pretty, and shall I ever see them?”

I dare say she meant to ask if they would notice her, and as I knew they would not I gave her question another meaning, and replied:

“They are almost always at church, and the Schuyler pew is the large square one in front. You will be sure to see them there.”

“Yes, I am going next Sunday, but we must sit near the door, I suppose. Still, I shall see them come in, for I mean to be early, and I do hope Mr. Godfrey will be here by that time with the beautiful lady Edith.”

Here was an opportunity I could not let slip, my woman’s curiosity was so strong, and so I said:

“Is Mrs. Schuyler beautiful?”

“Yes, I guess she is; the beautifullest woman I ever saw. Why, she looked like a queen the morning she was married, and more like his daughter than his wife.”

“Have you seen her often? Were you near her in church?” I asked in some surprise, unable to reconcile her statement of the new Mrs. Schuyler’s beauty, with a rumor which had reached me in a roundabout way concerning her age and personal appearance.

“Yes, I was very near her in church and threw her some flowers, and I saw her many times at Oakwood, in the grounds where she walked in her pretty white dresses. I did not speak to her, you know. I was some ways off, but I could see how handsome she was, and everybody said so, too.”

Gertie’s reply puzzled me, for I knew that the Schuyler Hill ladies were expecting something dreadful in the bride and were preparing themselves accordingly, while Gertie’s story seemed to contradict the entire thing. But all I had to do was to wait and see for myself, so I asked no more questions, and as the afternoon was drawing to a close, we left the cemetery and took a path homeward, which led near to the great house on the hill. The ladies were playing croquet on the lawn, and Gertie pulled my dress and whispered:

“See, there they are, four ladies; which are the sisters, and who are the others?”

I pointed out Julia and Emma Schuyler, and told her the lady in the black dress and scarlet shawl was Miss Rossiter, Godfrey’s aunt, and that the light-haired girl, with her hair put up so high, was Miss Alice Creighton from New York, who spent a great deal of time at Schuyler Hill, as the colonel was her guardian.

“Oh, how I like to play croquet! Why, if I can only get a ball, I can go clear round the ground the first time. Do you think they would ask us to join them if we went nearer?” she said; and I replied that I hardly thought they would care to give up that game for the sake of taking us in, while to myself I wondered at her temerity in proposing such a thing.

I did not know her then as well as I did afterward, for though she could tell Godfrey Schuyler that he must not talk to her because she was poor, in her heart she was a born aristocrat, and felt no distinction except the accident of wealth between herself and people like the Schuylers. She never forgot that her mother was a lady, and though she had but forty pounds a year and her auntie was a seamstress, she felt no inferiority to any one, and expected kindness and attention from all. It was a little singular that of the four ladies in the lawn she should have singled out Alice Creighton as the subject for remark, and not very complimentary remarks either.

“Why does she wear her hair so high?” she asked, and when I explained that it was the fashion, she answered: “But it is very ugly, and makes her look so queer. Will Mr. Godfrey like that? He said mine was pretty in my neck;” and taking off her white cape sun-bonnet she let her bright, wavy hair fall in masses around her face and down her back.

“You are a little girl,” I said, “and Miss Creighton is seventeen, and engaged, I guess.”

“Engaged!” she repeated. “That’s funny, and she so young. Is it Mr. Godfrey?”

I was stooping to button my boot, and did not answer her, while she forgot to put the question again, and clutching my arm, said in a whisper:

“Look, she is coming here; this way; right toward us.”

“Good-evening, Miss Armstrong,” Alice said. “I saw you standing here, and got our governess to take my place, while I came to ask if you know of any one who can do fluting nicely, and plain sewing as well. Adams is sick just when I need her most, and I thought you might know of some one.”

“I do,—I know,—auntie flutes and sews splendidly,” Gertie’s voice rang out clear and silvery as a bell, while Alice stared at her superciliously at first; then curiously; and turned to me with a questioning look in her haughty eyes.

I knew Miss Creighton would never forgive me if I introduced her formally to the protégée of one who did fluting and plain sewing, so I merely said:

“This is Gertie Westbrooke, my pupil, whose auntie lives at Vine Cottage, and will I dare say be glad of your work.”

Gertie bowed, but Alice’s head was high as ever, and as she had thrown off her hat she did look funny with that little ball of hair perched on the top of her head. But it was fashionable, and Alice led the fashions in Hampstead, and it was not for me to criticise, though I did mentally compare the two girls, as they stood there side by side, Gertie, with her wealth of auburn hair, on which the setting sunlight fell, her blue eyes opened wide and full of eager interest in the girl who was engaged, her simple gingham frock, her pretty frilled white apron and rather coarse shoes; the whole so different from the ruffled silk, old enough for a woman of twenty-five, the dainty boots of bronze, the profusion of jewelry, the elaborately arranged hair, the small, retroussé nose, and the half-shut sleepy eyes which stared so hard at Gertie, as if she were a new species of the animal kingdom never seen before.

“Yes, I heard Godfrey had some new tenants in his house,” Alice said; “and I am glad to know the woman can sew and flute. I wonder if she does it well? Did she do this?”

And she put out her hand to lift Gertie’s apron for inspection.

But the child took a step backward, and said, with the manner of a duchess:

“Yes, she did this; and she sews very well. You can judge for yourself by trying her.”

Alice elevated her eyebrows and nose, and I was almost certain the ball on her head took an upward inclination too, but she said nothing except that she would call to-morrow and see the woman.

“What is her name, did you say?”

I told her Mrs. Rogers; and with a little nod that she understood me, she added:

“You ought to see the way Miss Christine is in. It’s too comical for anything, and would amuse me vastly were it not that I, too, feel vexed, and annoyed, and sorry for the girls. It’s too bad to have such a step-mother brought home to them, and I do not blame them for feeling aggrieved. I should rebel, too, to have such a woman thrust upon me.”

Gertie had stood very quietly listening to Miss Creighton, her eyes growing larger and darker, and the blood mounting to her cheeks and brow, which were crimson, as she burst out:

“It isn’t so, Miss Creighton, if by ‘such a woman’ you mean something bad. It is not so. Lady Edith is beautiful. I know her. I’ve seen her. She gave me a shawl and sent me things when I was sick.”

Alice, who was or affected to be near-sighted, and carried a glass at her side, raised it to her eyes and inspected this champion of Mrs. Schuyler, saying, with a little laugh:

“Really, I am glad to meet with one of Mrs. Schuyler’s acquaintances, and to hear so good an account of her. Pray, do you know her well?”

Gertie understood her meaning, and answered, spiritedly:

“I am not one of her acquaintances. I am nobody but Gertie Westbrooke, but I’ve seen her many times in the grounds at Oakwood, and when she came to her mother’s where we had lodgings, and I know she is good, and pretty, and a lady, and Mr. Godfrey likes her.”

“Do you know Godfrey too? Your circle of friends must be quite extended,” was Alice’s next remark, to which Gertie did not reply.

She was tying on her bonnet, and only gave a quick, angry glance at Miss Creighton as she started to walk away.

“That’s a queer little thing,” Alice said, as I stood a moment with her. “Rather pretty, too, isn’t she, with those blue eyes and that bright hair. How she did flame up though in Mrs. Schuyler’s defence! Her account of the lady does not tally with Godfrey’s, but then I suppose it was the shawl and the nice things which caught her fancy. Did she say she was a lodger of Mrs. Schuyler’s mother? That is something quite new, and worse than the hired companion. Poor Jule and Emma. I really pity them, and they so proud and exclusive.”

“Alice, Alice, come, we want you,” came floating across the lawn from Julia Schuyler, and with a quick little nod, such as she always gave me, Miss Creighton went back to her companions, leaving me to think of what Gertie had said about lodging with Mrs. Schuyler’s mother, and to feel, it may be, inly glad that the Schuylers were to be punished a little for their arrogance and pride.

I did not know Edith then.