THE TRAVELLERS,
Were Miss Creighton, Miss Schuyler, Miss Emma Schuyler, Miss Barton,
Godfrey, Robert and Tom; and they made a very merry party as they
entered the car at the Thirty-first Street station, and with their dash
and style and self-assurance of manner seemed to take entire possession
of the road and ignore the presence of every one.
“Three gentlemen to four ladies; that’s lucky for one of us,” Tom Barton
said, as he quietly appropriated his sister and Emma Schuyler to
himself, leaving Julia as a matter of course to Robert Macpherson, and
Alice to her betrothed.
Good-natured Tom did not care a picayune with whom he talked or sat, so
long as he knew he was to dine at Schuyler Hill, and see Gertie with the
wonderful eyes and hair, and the shy drooping of her lids and the bright
color coming and going in her face just as it did when she told him
there was no hope, but bade him be a man all the same for her sake and
the sake of the fair girl he would find some day to take her place in
his heart. Tom knew he shouldn’t find the girl, but he was trying to be
a man, and even Julia Schuyler tolerated him now, and divided her
coquetries between him and Robert Macpherson, who was unusually quiet
and studied the scenery from the window more than he did the dark,
handsome face beside him.
Alice was satisfied to talk with Godfrey, and no one in the car who
watched her could help guessing what he was to her, or that she was more
delighted with the state of affairs than he. Alice was not Godfrey’s
choice, though he was engaged to her, and had been for four days, during
which time she had made the most of her new dignity, and shown her lover
to as many of her friends as possible, and chosen her own engagement
ring, and looked at a corner house far up town, which she wished Godfrey
to secure at any cost, as her heart was set upon it. And Godfrey
acquiesced in everything, and got the refusal of the house, and went
with her to look at some rare bronzes and a $5,000 painting, on which
her heart was also set, and played the devoted lover as well as he
could, with no shadow of genuine love in the whole affair so far as he
was concerned. How he came to be engaged he hardly knew, except that his
father desired it, while Alice herself expected it, and people had
talked of it so long that he had gradually come to consider it as
something he must take as a matter of course, just as he took the
measles, and the mumps, and the chicken-pox. And yet it was very sudden
at the last. “A word and a blow,” he said to Robert, who asked why he
looked so white when, after the deed was done, he went to call on his
friend at the hotel.
“White,” Godfrey replied. “I guess you’d be white, too, if you’d been
and gone and got engaged as I have! Why, Bob, I feel as I did when I was
a little shaver, and swallowed a rusty copper, and Aunt Christine
slapped me on the back, till the copper flew half way across the room,
and I was black as your hat. I say, Bob, hit me a cut or two, and see if
I can’t throw this up.”
With a merry laugh Robert replied:
“I don’t believe you’ll throw up thirty thousand a year as easily as you
did the rusty copper; but tell me about it. How did it happen, and
when?”
“Why, you see,” Godfrey rejoined, “I always supposed it would have to
come, father was so anxious, and mother, too, before she died; but I
guess a chap is never in a hurry to take what he is sure of, and I’ve
staved it off, and never even looked love at her, except in a joking
way, until this morning, when I went to call upon her at Uncle
Calvert’s, and found her so pale and pensive, the result of that
abominable sea-sickness, from which you know she suffered the voyage
home. Now there is nothing strikes to my stomach quite so quick as
sea-sickness, and I felt sorry for her, and when she told me how
lonesome she was at Uncle Calvert’s, with the everlasting din of those
street cars in her ears, and cried a little, why, I—I—I began to feel
kind of, well, just as any chap would feel sitting by a nice girl, who,
he knows, expects to marry him, with a tear running down the side of her
nose, and so it was very easy for me to pick up her fat, white
hands,—she _has_ pretty hands,—and pat them a little, and say: ‘Suppose
we get married, Alice, and then you can live with me, and not have to
stay in this poky house. Shall we, Alice?’”
“‘Yes, Godfrey,’ she said, and then,—well, I’ll leave something to your
imagination, only the thing is settled, and we are to go to Tiffany’s
this afternoon and get the ring, and to-morrow we look at that
show-house up town, which Larkin built and failed in, and I am to write
to father, and the news will be over Hampstead when we get there, and I
feel, as I told you, much as I did when I swallowed the cent!”
This was Godfrey’s account of his engagement, from which the reader will
infer that so far as his heart was concerned there was very little of it
in the matter. But he did not love any one else, and that was in Alice’s
favor; and she managed him so adroitly that he made a very well behaved
lover, deferring to all her wishes, and treating her with attention, and
even a show of tenderness when they were alone.
Once, on the day before they went to Hampstead, Robert said to him:
“By the way, Schuyler, is ‘_La Sœur_’ at the Hill?”
“‘_La Sœur!_’ Gertie, you mean,” Godfrey replied. “I really do not know
whether she has left school or not. Nobody ever mentions her in any of
their letters, and I’ve lost track of her entirely. I wrote to her two
or three times when she first went off to school, but she did not
answer, and so I gave it up. Why, it’s four years and a half since I saw
her. She must be a young lady by this time. I say, Bob, do you suppose
she is as sweet and pretty now as she was when you painted that picture?
I thought her then the daintiest creature I had ever seen.”
Before Robert could reply there was a knock on the door, and Tom Barton
was ushered in. He had come from Hampstead by the morning train, and
called to see his old friends when he learned where they were. With
Gertie fresh in his mind, Godfrey said to him:
“Barton, do you know if that little girl we almost pulled caps over once
is at the Hill now?”
“Do you mean Miss Westbrooke?” Tom said, in a tone which made Godfrey
turn quickly to look at him, while a suspicion which hurt him strangely
flashed through his mind.
“Yes, I mean Miss Westbrooke. She is a young lady now, I suppose. Is she
at home, and pretty as ever?”
Tom had heard from his sister of Godfrey’s engagement, and as the world
had long ago given Robert Macpherson to Julia Schuyler, he had nothing
to dread from either, and launched forth at once into praises of Gertie
Westbrooke, the most beautiful creature upon whom the sun ever shone, as
well as the purest, and sweetest, and best.
“Why, there is not a man, woman, or child in Hampstead that would not
fall down and worship her if she wished it.”
“Upon my word, Tom, you must be far gone,” Godfrey said, with that
little _hurt_ still in his heart. “I should not wonder if you and I were
in the same boat, eh?”
He looked curiously at Tom, who answered him frankly and sadly withal:
“No, Godfrey, she won’t have a drunken dog like me. She told me so
herself,—not in those words, to be sure, but in the sweet, gentle way
she has of telling the truth for one’s good. I swore then I’d reform,
and I have not been drunk in a year, and if I ever am a man again, it
will be Gertie Westbrooke who saved me, Heaven bless her!”
There was a tremor in Tom’s voice as he said this, and then added,
abruptly:
“Yes, she’s at the Hill. You’ll see her when you get home.”
And so when Godfrey sat at last in the railway car beside his betrothed,
to whom he paid the attentions she required of him, his thoughts were
not so much with her as with the girl at Schuyler Hill, whom every man,
woman and child admired, if Tom’s word was to be trusted. Alice, too,
thought of her, and calling across the aisle to Julia, asked:
“Is that Westbrooke girl at Schuyler Hill?”
“I believe so,” Julia replied, adding, as she saw the look of interest
in Robert’s face: “I think she is a kind of companion for Mrs. Schuyler,
and will, perhaps, be little Arthur’s governess. You know father
educated her for a teacher?”
“I saw her last winter,” Rosamond Barton said; “and really, girls, she
has the most beautiful face and form I ever looked at. Everything about
her is perfect. You’ll have to paint her again, Mr. Macpherson. Your
first picture does not do her justice now.”
Robert bowed, while Julia said, snappishly:
“Indeed, I am most anxious to behold this paragon. I have not seen her
either for two years or more. She had a very red nose then.”
“Yes, but it came from a bad cold,” Emma quickly interposed, ready now
as ever to defend the right; and then the conversation touching Gertie
ceased, and a few moments after the whistle sounded, and the party had
reached the Hampstead station.
They walked to the house, and Gertie watched them as they came up the
avenue,—Tom, Rosamond and Emma, Robert Macpherson and Julia, and lastly
Godfrey and Alice, he carrying her shawl and travelling satchel, and she
looking up into his face in that matter of course, assured kind of way
she had assumed since her engagement.
But Godfrey had other occupation than attending to her and her pretty
coquetries. His eyes had travelled up the road, across the lawn to the
broad piazza, and the young girl standing there, clothed in white, with
the blue ribbons round her waist and the bright hair on her neck. And
that he knew was Gertie; not much taller than when he saw her last, but
grown and rounded into beautiful womanhood, which showed itself even at
that distance, though not in all its fulness. That came to him when at
last he stood with her hand in his looking into her upturned face and
drinking in with every glance fresh draughts of her wondrous beauty,
which so bewildered and intoxicated him that until Alice spoke to him
twice and asked for her satchel he did not hear her. Then releasing
Gertie’s hand, he turned to Alice and said:
“I beg your pardon. I did not know you were speaking to me.”
Then he kissed Edith, and tossed little Arthur in his arms, and shook
his father’s hand, and greeted the servants with his old freedom and
kindness of manner, while Gertie stood just where he left her, thinking
how differently it had all happened from what she had expected.
Mr. Macpherson had been glad to see her, and had shown it, and so had
Emma and Rosamond, while Alice had offered her two fingers, and said, in
a formal way, “Happy to meet you,” and Julia had offered one finger with
a nod and a “how d’ye do, Gertie,” but Godfrey had not said _one word_!
He had merely taken her hand and held it, and looked at her, not quite
as friend looks at friend after an absence of years, but in a way which
puzzled and perplexed her, and made her heart throb quickly, and the
color deepen on her cheeks. How handsome he was, and how changed in some
respects from the tall, slender youth, who seemed all legs and arms, but
who now in the fulness of manhood was not one inch too tall. All the
lankness of his boyhood was gone, but the grace and suppleness remained,
and his erect form and square shoulders would have become the finest
officer that ever drilled his pupils at West Point. On the face, once so
smooth and fair, there was a rich brown beard now, and the hair had
taken a darker tinge, and curling a little at the ends lay in thick
masses around his broad white brow. Even his eyes were softened, though
they still brimmed with fun and mischief, and tenderness, too, as Gertie
knew when they were gazing into hers.
“What do you think of Godfrey?”
It was Tom Barton who asked the question, and starting from her dreamy
attitude, Gertie replied:
“I think him the most splendid-looking man I ever saw.”
“That’s so,” Tom answered, warmly, while Gertie, who had no wish to talk
with him further then, passed into the house and went to her own room.
It was six o’clock, and with a hasty glance at herself in the mirror,
and a thought that her personal appearance mattered nothing to any one,
she went down to the parlor, where the family usually assembled before
going in to dinner. They were all there now, talking and laughing in
little groups, except Godfrey, who stood apart from the others, leaning
his elbow on the mantel and watching the door as if expecting some one
to enter. He had mentally commented on the ladies as they came in,
pronouncing Edith beautiful, Julia handsome, Emma graceful and stylish,
Rosamond pretty and sweet, and Alice _stunning_ and fashionable; and now
he was waiting for the girl in the simple white muslin, who came at
last, without the aid of Parisian toilet or ornament of any kind, and
eclipsed the whole, just as the morning sun obscures the daylight and
makes itself the centre of light and glory. There was no shadow of
embarrassment perceptible as she entered the parlor, but her manner was
that of a daughter of the house rather than an inferior, as she crossed
the long room and joined the group by the bay-window. There was a
supercilious stare from Julia, a little nod from Alice, and a welcoming
smile from Edith, Emma, and Rosamond; and then the conversation flowed
on again until the dinner-bell rang, and the party filed off in pairs to
the dining-room. As a matter of course, Godfrey took Alice, while Julia
fell naturally to Robert, and Tom was left with three girls on his
hands.
“I can’t beau you all, so I guess I’ll take my pick,” he said, as he
offered his arm to Gertie, while his sister and Emma followed behind.
And so it came about that Tom was seated between Gertie and Julia
Schuyler, who, not satisfied with the attentions of Mr. Macpherson,
tried her best to attract Tom also, and keep him from talking to Gertie.
“Not any wine?” she said, as he drew his glass away when the decanter
was passed. “That is something new. You’ll surely take a little with me.
It is some of father’s very best.”
Tom knew that as well or better than she did, and the smell and the
demon in the cup moving itself upright was tempting him sorely, while
Julia’s seductive smile and words of entreaty were more than he could
endure, and forgetting what even a taste involved he raised the glass,
while Rosamond, sitting opposite, looked pale and anxious, and
distressed. But ere a drop had touched his lips, a hand pressed his arm,
and a soft voice said, “Don’t.”
Instantly the glass went down upon the table with so much force that the
wine was spilled upon the cloth, while Julia muttered, under her breath,
“Upon my word!” as she cast a lightning glance upon Gertie, whose face
flushed, but whose blue eyes smiled approvingly upon poor Tom, and
intoxicated him almost as much as the colonel’s best wine could have
done, only in a different way.
“You are a darling,” Rosamond whispered to her, when at a late hour she
and her brother were saying good-by to the young people at the Hill.
“Nobody but you could have kept Tom from drinking. I shall tell mother
about it.”
Tom, too, subdued, and ashamed that he had been so near falling again,
and very grateful to his deliverer, whispered his words of thankfulness.
“You are my good angel, Gertie; but for you I should have been as drunk
as a fool by this time. Heaven bless you as you deserve!”
Then the brother and sister went away, and the young ladies, tired and
sleepy, started for their rooms, Alice looking around for Godfrey, with
whom she would gladly have tarried a little longer to hear the soft
nothings which she liked and had a right to expect from him. But Godfrey
had disappeared, and only Gertie stood at the end of the broad piazza,
leaning against a pillar, with the moonlight falling full upon her as
she looked off upon the river and the mountains beyond, wondering at the
strange unrest which filled her soul, and at the coldness of Godfrey
toward her. As yet he had not addressed her a word since he came home,
neither had she spoken to him. To be sure there had been a reason for
this, for since the moment of his arrival, when he held her hand in his
and looked so curiously at her, he had been occupied with some one else.
His seat at dinner had been far away from hers. After dinner she had sat
an hour or so with little Arthur, whom she always put to sleep, and on
her return to the drawing-room she had at once been claimed by Tom
Barton, who kept constantly at her side until he bade her good-night. So
Godfrey was not so much to blame, and she acquitted him of intentional
neglect, but felt a little hurt and grieved, and was saying to herself,
“He does not care for me now,” when a voice said, close to her ear,
“Gertie!”
It was Godfrey’s, and he was there beside her, looking into her face, on
which the moonlight shone so brightly. He had eluded Alice, and when he
heard her voice in her own room he stole out upon the piazza, intending
to walk up and down a while before retiring to rest. First, however, he
made the circuit of the building and glanced up at the room in the south
wing, which he had heard from Edith was Gertie’s. But the windows were
dark; Gertie was not there; or, being there, must have retired, and he
retraced his steps to the piazza in front, where he saw the little,
white-robed figure leaning over the railing. That was Gertie, and he
went swiftly to her side, and spoke the one word, “Gertie,” which
brought the color to her cheeks, while the sparkle of the blue eyes,
lifted so quickly, kindled a strange fire in his veins, and made him
shiver as if he were cold.
“What, Godfrey?” Gertie answered softly, her eyes confronting him
steadily a moment, and then dropping beneath his ardent gaze.
“Gertie, do you know you have not spoken to me since I came home? And I
thought you would be so glad to see me.”
There was reproach in his tone, and it went to Gertie’s heart, and her
voice trembled as she replied:
“I am glad to see you, Godfrey, gladder than you can guess. I thought so
much of your coming, and then when you came home you never spoke to me.”
There certainly was a tear on the long eyelashes, and tears on Gertie’s
eyelashes were very different things from tears on Alice’s nose, and the
impulsive Godfrey snatched up the hand which rested on the railing and
held it fast in his own, as he said:
“Do you know why I did not speak to you? I could not, I was so
completely confounded and bewildered to find you what you are. Tom
Barton,—by the way, Gertie, you certainly have no intention of marrying
Tom Barton, if he reforms a hundred times?”
“No, Godfrey, I have not.”
“I thought so. Well, Tom raved about you by the hour, and said you were
beautiful; but that does not express it. I wonder now if you know just
how you look.”
She did not answer him, and he went on:
“It is more than four years since I saw you, and I had you in my mind as
the little girl I used to tease at the cottage, and who used to
criticise me so severely. _Petite_ you are still, it is true, but so
changed in everything else, so completely a woman, that for a few
moments I think I must have been sorry, feeling as I did that I had lost
my little mentor in more ways than one.”
He was looking fixedly at her, with strange, wild words trembling on his
lips, but there was a bar between him and the bright beauty which so
dazzled and fascinated him,—a thought of Alice, the light from whose
window was shining down upon the shrubbery, and whose voice, as she
leaned from the casement, was heard saying to some one: “Yes, she really
is very pretty, but has no _style_ whatever.”
“Style be——” Godfrey did not say what, for a look in the blue eyes
checked him; but he deepened his grasp on the hand he held, and his
breath came hard as he said: “Gertie, you have not yet congratulated me
upon my prospects. Do you not think I have chosen well?”
To Gertie it did not seem as if he had chosen well. He had nothing in
common with Alice Creighton, but she did not tell him so, and she was
wondering how she should answer him, when again the voice above them
rang out, clear and loud:
“I have no fear of that. Her pretty face may attract Godfrey, and lead
him to say soft nothings to her on the sly. All men do that, but I fancy
I have influence enough to keep him from going far astray.”
“Oh, Godfrey, I must not stay here any longer. It is too much like
listening. Let me go, please!” Gertie said, trying to release her hand.
But Godfrey held her fast, saying to her:
“It is not listening. If Alice does not wish us to hear, let her talk in
her room, and not out of the window. I cannot let you go yet. I want you
all to myself for a little while. I may not get another chance.”
He smiled bitterly, and then laying his disengaged hand on Gertie’s
shoulder he suddenly asked:
“Why did you not answer my letters, Gertie?”
“Your letters, Godfrey! What letters? I never received a line from you,”
Gertie said, while Godfrey rejoined:
“Never received a line from me! That is very strange!—and I wrote to you
three different times. Think, Gertie,—try to recall it. Fours years ago,
when you first went to school, and I came home and found you gone, I
wrote from here how disappointed I was not to see you, and asked you to
correspond with me, and let me be your brother. You were my little
sister, I said; I adopted you as such, and I said a heap more _soft
nothings_, as Alice might call them, though I was very much in earnest
at the time, and to myself called you ‘_La Sœur_’ always. And you never
received that letter?”
“Never, Godfrey. I should remember that, and you say you wrote again?”
“Yes, from Andover; and sent my photograph, and asked for yours in
return, and bet fifty dollars with some students that I’d show them the
handsomest picture they ever saw, and I waited so anxiously for it; but
it never came, and at last I wrote again, and told you to go to thunder!
I did, upon my word, I felt so piqued and slighted, and I said I meant
to go to the bad, and smoke, and drink, and swear, and do everything I
could think of.”
“Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey! You didn’t, though, I hope!” Gertie cried, while
her fingers tightened around the hand holding them so fast.
“Yes, I did,—for a little while. I drank a lot of wine, which went to my
head, and smoked three cigars, which went to my stomach, and made me
feel worse than sea-sickness, if that were possible. I was crazy as a
loon, and smashed everything in my room, and sang uproarious songs; and,
when one of the tutors came to see what was up, I called him a fool, and
threw the wash-bowl at his head. Of course I was reprimanded, and
reported to father, who came to see about it, and paid for the
furniture, and talked so good that I promised to do better, and I did.
And you say you never received those letters?”
“Never, Godfrey. I should have answered them,” Gertie said, while
Godfrey continued: “And if you had, Gertie,—I might,—oh, who knows what
might have been!”
He was holding both her hands and looking down upon her as no man ought
to look upon a girl when he is engaged to another. Some such thought as
this must have crossed Gertie’s mind, for she released herself from him
suddenly, and said:
“It is very late, Godfrey. I must go in now.”
“No, Gertie, please,” and he still tried to detain her. “Wait a little
longer. I am yours to-night; to-morrow I am some one’s else, and must
come under orders, you know.”
He spoke ironically, and then as he saw that Gertie was really leaving
him, he continued:
“By the way, Gertie, one thing more, and you may go. Do you remember the
forlorn sick little girl who sat on the deck years ago, and the bold,
impudent fellow who made her so angry, and the promise she gave him on
certain conditions?”
Gertie’s cheeks were scarlet, as she replied: “Yes, Godfrey, I remember
it.”
“Well, then, can you redeem the promise now?”
There was the old saucy look in his eyes, mingled with another look,
which Gertie could not mistake, and stepping backward as he bent toward
her, she answered him: “No, you are _not_ a gentleman, or you would not
remind me of that _now_!”
She was gone, and he heard her step as she went up the stairs and
through the hall of the south wing to her own room, and he was alone in
the quiet night, wondering what spell was upon him, and if it really
were himself standing there, so bewildered and perplexed.
“I’ll walk down the avenue and back as fast as I can, and see if that
brings me to myself,” he said, and he tried it, and went to the little
cottage, where Gertie used to live, and stood leaning over the fence,
and recalling the time when he first saw her there working in the garden
with the flush on her cheeks, and her bright hair floating back from her
face.
And then he remembered her as he had just seen her, grown to glorious
womanhood, with eyes whose glances intoxicated him as he had never been
intoxicated since the memorable college spree. Then he walked back again
to the house on the Hill, every window of which was darkened, and whose
inmates were asleep. But for himself, he felt that he should never sleep
again with those two conflicting sensations battling so fiercely in his
heart, one cutting like a sharp, keen knife, when he remembered Alice
and the words spoken to her less than a week ago, and the other
thrilling him with ecstasy and a sense of delicious joy when he thought
of the sweet, serene face on which the moonlight had fallen, softening
and subduing, and making it like the face of an angel.
Godfrey was in love! He knew it at last, and exclaimed:
“_I am_ in love with Gertie Westbrooke, and believe I have been ever
since I first saw her years ago in London. But the knowledge of it has
come too late. No Schuyler ever yet broke his word, and I shall not
break mine. But if she had received my letters it might have been so
different.”
And why had she not received them? How could three letters go astray?
Certainly he directed them aright. He surely did the one sent to
Schuyler Hill. He had written to his father at the same time and
received an answer to that. Why, then, did Gertie not get hers? Had
there been foul play, and if so, where and by whom? Suddenly there
flashed into his mind a suspicion which made him start, while a strange
gleam shone in his eyes, as he said:
“I’ll know the truth to-morrow.”
It was to-morrow now, for the early summer morning was shining on the
mountain tops, and tired and excited, Godfrey went at last to his room
to get a little rest before the household was astir.