BREAKING THE NEWS.
Godfrey returned to Oakwood two weeks before the wedding, and brought
with him a young artist, Robert Macpherson, whom he had found in Rome,
and who had accompanied him to Russia. As he had not received his
father’s letter he was ignorant of the engagement, and Colonel Schuyler
blushed like a school boy, and stammered and hesitated, when he tried to
tell him. Godfrey had asked for Miss Lyle, and the colonel, after
replying that she was with her mother, had continued:
“My son, you may be surprised,—no, you can hardly be surprised, knowing
her as you do,—when I tell you that I am,—yes, I am about to,—am going
to,—give you a new mother. Yes,” and the colonel walked to the window
and spat on a rosebush outside, and wiped his face, and mustering all
his courage, added: “Miss Lyle has promised to be my wife, and you will
agree with me, I think, that she is a remarkable,—yes, a very remarkable
woman.”
He had told his story, and waited for Godfrey’s reply, which came first
in a low, suppressed whistle, and then in a merry laugh as he jumped up,
and giving his pants a violent shake, said: “I agree with you, father;
she is a very remarkable woman, or she would not consent to be my mother
and Jule’s; My! won’t she pick her eyes out, and Aunt Christine will
help her. Why, _she_ meant to have you herself!”
“Who, Christine?” Colonel Schuyler said, aghast at the very idea of
wedding a woman whom he detested, even though she was a Rossiter, and
the sister of his wife.
“Yes, she has set her cap at you ever since mother died, and she came up
to Hampstead with all her wraps and confounded drugs, and raised Cain
generally,” Godfrey replied, and his father smiled a pleased kind of
smile, and, man-like, was conscious of a new interest in the woman who
had “set her cap for him,” while at the same time he felt intense
satisfaction in thinking of Edith in all her youth and brilliant beauty,
and comparing her with Aunt Christine, whose body was one great
receptacle of drugs, and who, Godfrey said, wore two flannel wraps in
the summer, and four in the winter, besides shawls and scarfs
innumerable.
Godfrey’s preference was evidently for Edith, and so his father said to
him: “You do not object. You like Miss Lyle, I believe.”
“Like her? Yes, I rather think I do, and if she’d been younger, or I
older, I’d have gone for her myself. She’s the most splendid woman I
ever saw, but, by Jove, I’m sorry for her, though, for what with Aunt
Christine, and Alice, and Julia, and Tiffe and Em, she’ll have a sorry
time.”
The colonel frowned darkly, and his eyebrows almost met together as he
answered with great dignity:
“Everybody in my house must treat my wife with respect; but, Godfrey,
perhaps it may be well in your letter home to speak a good word for Miss
Lyle, prepare the way, you know. You have great influence over Julia, or
at least over Miss Creighton, which amounts to the same thing. I have
written, of course, but would like you to do so, too.”
“Certainly, with pleasure,” Godfrey said, and there was a merry twinkle
in his saucy eyes as he thought of the “hornet’s nest” he would stir up
at home.
The colonel had that day written to his eldest daughter, Julia, in his
usual dignified manner, that he was about to marry Miss Edith Lyle, “a
lady of good family, the daughter of a clergyman, the friend and
companion of my deceased sister, your late Aunt Sinclair. She possesses
many and varied accomplishments, and is, what I consider, a very
remarkable person, and I shall expect a kind reception for her, and that
all due deference will be paid to her by every member of my household.
Break the news to your Aunt Christine, and tell Mrs. Tiffe to have the
rooms in the south wing made ready for Mrs. Schuyler. I have written to
Perry about repairing them, but she must superintend it.”
This was in part the colonel’s letter, while Godfrey’s was widely
different.
“We are in for a step-mother, sure,” he wrote, “and may as well make the
best of it. Try to imagine father in love, will you? and such a love!
Truly she is ‘a very remarkable person,’ as you will say when you see
her. Just think of father’s marrying a red-haired woman of forty, with a
limp and glass eye, which looks at you with a squint, and a crack in her
voice, which sounds like Ettie Armstrong’s old piano, and quite as many
aches and pains as Aunt Christine herself! But then, she’s nice, and I
like her ever so much, while the governor,—well, it is something
wonderful to see how far gone he is; and I tell you, girls, one and all,
that if you do not treat this beauty with proper attention there will be
the old Nick to pay! She will take your breath away at first, for, after
all I have said, you have no idea how she looks, and Alice must hold on
to her little nose, and Aunt Christine may as well lay in a fresh supply
of pills and Crown Bitters, and get her a new galvanic battery. She’ll
need them all to steady her nerves after the shock the bride will give
her. I shall be glad to be home once more, though I do not believe I am
greatly improved with foreign travel. I still shake down my pants, and
say ‘by Jove,’ and don’t believe I shall be ‘so disgusted with New York
because it looks so new and backwoodsey,’ or that I shall constantly
quote ‘dear, charming _Par-ee_.’ In short, I am just as much a ‘_clown_’
as ever, but by way of recompense I mean, if I can, to bring you the
nicest kind of a travelled chap, Robert Macpherson, whom I met in Rome,
and like so much, even if he does part his hair in the middle, and carry
an eyeglass, and put perfumery into his bath, and wear ruffled
night-shirts buttoned behind. He’s a good fellow, with money, and a
profession, too. He is an artist, and his father was cousin to Lord
Somebody or other, and I mean to persuade him to come to America with me
for you girls to pull caps about. So you’ve something to live for
besides the new mamma, to whom I must pay my respects as soon as I have
finished this letter. So no more at present from your brother,
GODFREY.”
* * * * *
The young scamp chuckled with delight as he read over this letter and
thought what a bombshell it would be in the staid household at Schuyler
Hill.
“I haven’t written a lie either,” he said; “I only told them to _think
of_ father’s fancying such a person, and they will think of it, and Aunt
Christine will have a fit and swallow more than a quart of her bitters,
and take a shock strong enough to knock her down, and Jule’s back will
be up, and Alice’s nose, and Em will cry, and Tiffe will snort her
indignation, and there’ll be thunder raised generally.”
After these remarks Godfrey folded his letter and shook himself down,
and looked in the glass, and started for Caledonia Street to call upon
Edith. He found her at home, looking so beautiful as she rose to meet
him, with the flush on her cheek, and the new expression of peace and
quiet in her eyes, that he was conscious of a sharp pang of regret for
the years which lay between them. Then, as he remembered the woman of
forty, with the limp and glass eye, and thought of the consternation at
Schuyler Hill when his letter was received, and the surprise when the
bride herself should arrive, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of
laughter, while Edith looked wonderingly at him, with a rising color in
her cheeks.
“You must excuse me,” he said, as he held her hand in his. “It seems so
ridiculous to think of calling _you_ mother.”
“Don’t do it, please,” Edith replied. “I’d rather you would not. Let me
be Edith.”
And so the ice was broken, and Godfrey plunged into the subject at once,
in his half-comical, half-serious way.
“Honestly,” he said, “I am real glad you are going home with us. I never
liked any one outside of our family as well as I do you, and once I had
serious thoughts of making love to you myself! I did, upon my word, but
when I subtracted eighteen from twenty-eight, I said ‘no go.’ So far as
years are concerned that is worse than Aunt Christine and father.”
“Who is Aunt Christine?”
“Have I never told you of her? Well, inasmuch as you are to be one of
us, I may as well enlighten you with regard to the individuals whose
step-mother you are to be. Aunt Christine is mother’s sister, an old
maid, whose love died and left her his money. Since mother’s death she
has been with us a great deal of her time, quarrelling with Mrs.
Tiffe,—that’s the housekeeper,—bullying the servants, nagging the
governess, and watching to see that father didn’t look at a bonnet with
matrimony in his eye. You see, she wanted him herself, he forty-one and
she forty-six, and looking almost a hundred, with all the drugs and
nostrums she takes for her fancied ailments. She has the neuralgia, and
catarrh, and dyspepsia, and bronchitis, and liver complaint, and doctors
for them all, and has her room as full of bottles as an apothecary’s
shop, and sits with a dish of tar under her nose, and takes galvanic
shocks, and has her hair dressed every day, and wears the richest of
silk and finest of lace, and really looks splendidly when she is
dressed,—was handsome once, and is very exclusive and aristocratic, and
proud of her Rossiter blood, and will never rest until she knows a
person’s pedigree, root and branch.”
There were little red spots on Edith’s cheeks and neck as she thought of
Aunt Christine finding her out, root and branch. But, after all, what
did it matter, so long as her husband knew and did not care? she
reflected, and grew calm again, and amused, as Godfrey went on:
“I like her, of course, for she is very kind to me, but I would not have
father marry her for the world. Not that he ever thought of it, though
she has; and the time he rode out with Ettie Armstrong, the
schoolmistress, she was so angry, and wondered how he could let himself
down, and he a Schuyler, who had married a Rossiter!”
“Ettie Armstrong! That’s a pretty name,” Edith said, while there came
before her mind the vision of a dark-eyed girl who had promised to care
for Abelard’s grave, and to whom she had confessed her love for the
dead.
“Yes, ’tis a pretty name,” Godfrey said; “though Ettie herself is not
pretty. She is most an old maid, I guess, and teaches the village
school, and thrashed me like fun the summer I went to her, but never hit
me a lick amiss. Father rode with her once,—a mere happen-so,—and Aunt
Christine was furious. I say, Edith, except his age, father is a catch,
and you a lucky fellow. Why, half the women in New York and Hampstead
are after him, and have been ever since mother died. Even at her
funeral, when the clergyman, in eulogizing her and telling what a loss
she was to her family, asked ‘Who is there to fill her place?’ twenty
old maids hopped up——”
“Oh, Godfrey!” Edith exclaimed, shocked at his levity; “you should not
talk that way.”
Up to this point Godfrey had rattled on as if he had never had a serious
thought or known a genuine feeling of affection; but at Edith’s rebuke
the whole expression of his face changed instantly. His chin quivered,
and his voice trembled, as he said:
“You think me, no doubt, an unfeeling wretch, who never cared for
anybody; but you mistake me there. I loved my mother so much that I
never go to sleep at night without thinking of her in heaven, and
praying, in my poor way, that I may go to her some day; and I feel her
hand on my head, and hear her dying voice bidding me try to be good; and
I have tried every day. I loved my mother dearly, and the knowing that
father will marry again brings her back to me, and I’ve rattled on like
a fool just to keep—to keep—to keep from crying outright for the mother
who died.”
He was crying now, and Edith cried with him and held his head on her
lap, where he involuntarily laid it, while he sobbed out his grief. Nor
did she like him less for it. Indeed, the bond between them was stronger
than ever, now that she saw how deep his feelings were, and that under
his gay exterior was hidden so much genuine affection and sterling
worth. As she would have soothed and comforted a brother, she soothed
and comforted him until the little burst was over, and lifting up his
head, he said in his old playful way:
“There, I’ve had it out, and cried in your lap anyway. Quite a little
tempest, wasn’t it? I say, Edith, you are not to think I don’t want you
to marry father, for I do. I like you ever so much, and I’m going to
stand by you through thick and thin, and at first there’ll be more thick
than thin, for Julia will not be pleased with a step-mother, and Em will
follow Julia, and Alice, who is there a great deal, will sniff any way,
and Aunt Christine will ride her highest horse; but you are sure to win
in the end. Only wear your most queen-like air, and keep a stiff upper
lip, and act as if born to the purple, and you’ll conquer at last, with
the governor and me to uphold you. It’s a grand old place, and you’ll be
happy there. Who is that? Look quick, do,” he exclaimed suddenly, and
glancing toward the window Edith saw a cab standing before the gate, and
a plainly dressed woman coming up the walk.
“That is Mrs. Rogers,” she said. “She lodges here, but has been absent
several weeks. We were not expecting her so soon.”
“Mrs. Rogers,” Godfrey repeated. “I don’t mean that woman. It’s the girl
in the cab, with the bright hair and blue eyes, and the prettiest face I
ever saw. I wish she’d look out again.”
“That must be Gertie Westbrooke, Mrs. Rogers’s daughter,” Edith said.
“She is very pretty, I believe, though I have never seen her
distinctly.”
“Pretty! I should think she was! Why, she’s beautiful. I wish Bob
Macpherson could see that face and paint it. He went off this morning to
find some friends of his, but he’ll be back to the wedding. He is an
artist I found in Rome. You are sure to like him. I must go now.
Good-by, mother that is to be.”
He kissed her fondly, and then hurried out to see again the face in the
cab. Very curiously he gazed at the child, whose little fat hands went
up to the eyes, ostensibly to push back the stray locks of auburn hair,
but really to hide the blushing face. How pretty they looked as they lay
like white rose leaves against the mass of bright wavy hair, and how
Godfrey deplored the absence of Robert Macpherson, and wished he were
himself a painter as he walked away, carrying with him that image of
Gertie Westbrooke, with the shy, timid look on her face, the bright hair
veiling her soft blue eyes and the white hands brushing back the hair.