ROBERT MACPHERSON INTERVIEWS GERTIE.
Gertie was quite well the next day, and took her usual place at the
table, and when breakfast was over and Godfrey and the young ladies had
gone to ride, she strolled out to the little cemetery, which looked so
cool and inviting with the white marble gleaming through the evergreens
and climbing vines. Scarcely was she seated there when she heard
footsteps near, and saw Robert Macpherson coming rapidly toward her.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I have followed you here because I wanted to be
alone while I gave you something, and told you something which should
have been told and given before, only,—” he paused a moment, looking
both embarrassed and distressed, and then continued hastily: “I am a
coward and a fool! Gertie, were you ever ashamed to tell who you were?”
“What do you mean?” Gertie asked, looking curiously at him.
“I mean that my blood is a little mixed,” he answered, “but I will
explain that by and by, and now to my business. I think you have several
times pressed flowers which grew on this grave” (pointing to Abelard’s),
“and sent them to his mother.”
“Yes. I have pressed them for Mrs. Schuyler to send two or three times
when she had not the leisure, and have written for her to the
sweet-faced old lady of whom she once told me,” Gertie said, and Robert
rejoined: “I saw that old lady when I was abroad the last time, and when
she heard I was coming here she told me of Mrs. Schuyler, whom she had
seen, and of the ‘bonnie young lassie’ who took such care of her boy’s
grave, and sent her flowers from it, and she wrote you a letter, Gertie,
because she said you seemed very near to her, and she sent you some
‘Cairngorms’ for a necklace and earrings. They have been in the family
for years, and she intended them for her oldest grand-daughter, but she
died, and there is no other, so she sent them to you, knowing that Mrs.
Schuyler can have far more precious stones, though I think these very
handsome; they are almost as fine as a topaz,—look,” and he handed her a
box in which were several very fine Cairngorms of that variety found in
Aberdeenshire.
“Oh, how pretty, how beautiful!” Gertie exclaimed, holding them to the
light. “And she sent them to me? I do not understand it.”
“Read her letter and you will see how much she is interested in you,”
Robert said, handing Gertie a large, unsealed letter, directed in a very
peculiar hand, and which I will give in part, avoiding as much as
possible the broad Scotch which made it so unintelligible that Robert
was obliged himself to read it to Gertie before she clearly understood
it.
“My bonnie lassie,” it began, “an old crone from over the sea sends you
her blessing and prayers for the care you’ve tooken of my puir laddie’s
grave, and the posys you’ve sent, and the letters you’ve writ with the
same, and which fetches you very near to my heart and love, and so I
send you these stones from Can-Gorrum, to wear round your bonny neck,
and in yer pretty ears. My grandson, Robert, will tell you how his puir
mother had them, and gie them to me when I was cauld, and hungry, and
sair; but I dinna sell them for the siller, as she thinket I moight. I
weatherit the storm, Jinnie and me, and kep ’em for her ain sweet bairn,
Dolly, who died; and it’s not the loikes of Jinnie to wear sic as these,
and her lassies bein’ all lads, I sends them to you with my blessin’,
and duty to the beautiful Ladye Skiller, and so I greet you; God bless
you, good-by.
“MISTRESS DORATHY LYLE,
“by her grandson Robert.”
Gertie had listened intently until the point was reached where reference
was made to my “grandson Robert,” when she started up, exclaiming:
“_What?_”
“Wait,” Robert said; “wait till I am through,” and, with a shaking
voice, he finished the letter, laying a good deal of emphasis upon the
last words, “by my grandson Robert.”
“Her grandson! What does she mean, Mr. Macpherson? Does she mean _you_?”
Gertie asked, and Robert replied:
“Yes, Gertie, she means _me_. I am that woman’s grandchild, the son of
her daughter, and I am going to tell you about it.”
He spoke rapidly, and Gertie had no chance to interrupt him as he went
on.
“My mother was Dorothea Lyle, born in Alnwick, in the same thatched
cottage Mrs. Schuyler has undoubtedly described to you. She was the
eldest child and beautiful,—the Lyles are all good-looking, and mother
was pre-eminently so, with a tolerable education, too, acquired from a
lady in the neighborhood who was interested in her, and in whose house
she was a nursery governess. It was there she met my father, the
youngest son of an old Scotch family, which had a title in reversion and
a good deal of money. It was a runaway match, which the proud
Macphersons tried to overthrow. But they could not, and if they had, my
father would have married his beautiful Dolly again. He was very fond of
her, and taught her a great deal himself, so that my first recollections
of her are of as fine a lady in speech and manner as any I have ever
seen. I was born in Naples, where father tried to earn his living by
painting, for he was a natural artist and we were very poor, as his
family turned him off and would not receive him with his wife.
“It was about this time that Mrs. Lyle wrote to mother of sickness and
destitution, and asked for money in her need, but alas, we had none, and
mother sent these Cairngorms, which father bought for her when she was
married, and which they had never been able to have set for herself. She
thought her mother could sell them for bread, but she would not. Her
fortunes brightened a little just then, and she kept the stones
carefully, meaning them for my sister on her bridal day; but that day
never came. I told you of my sister once, and that you looked like her.
She was so beautiful, and I loved her so much, but she died when she was
twelve years old, and the only picture we had of her was burned. Our
fortunes were mending then. The Macpherson mother was dead, and the
father sent us money, and when mother died, two years after Dora, father
and I were invited to Glenthorpe, in the north of Scotland, and there
father died, and by my grandfather’s will I came into possession, at his
death, of a large sum of money, and now, by another death, I have a
right, if I choose, to take my wife to Glenthorpe, should I ever have
one, which I probably never shall, for the girl I love is too proud to
marry _me_, knowing who I am.”
Gertie thought of Julia Schuyler, but she did not speak, and after a
moment Robert continued:
“You wonder, perhaps, why I never told this before, and I blush to own
that I was ashamed to do it and acknowledge that I was anything to this
man by whose grave I stand, or anything to that family whom Mr. and Mrs.
Schuyler and Godfrey have seen. I think people who have been very poor,
and have come up from the great unwashed, have that feeling more than
those to the manor born, and though I have tried to be kind to my
mother’s friends so far as gifts are concerned, I have shrunk from
coming in contact with them, especially the Aunt Nesbit, of whom it is
no slander to say she is very _coarse_.
“I went first to see them years ago, just before coming to America, and
when I heard of their acquaintance with the Schuylers I hesitated about
crossing the sea with Godfrey, but was finally persuaded and came to
Hampstead where I have felt like a criminal every time allusion has been
made to Abelard Lyle. Last March I went again to see them, and, coward
that I am, did not tell them I had been here, only that I was coming,
and then Mrs. Lyle, my grandmother, spoke of you, and asked me to bring
the letter and the Cairngorms. I could not refuse, and knew then I must
tell you everything, and I have, except, indeed, of my father’s family,
which ranks among the first in Scotland. Glenthorpe is a beautiful place
and will be my home in future, for I am the only male heir left to that
estate.
“I have told you my story, Gertie, and will not ask you to keep my
secret. The sooner it is divulged the better, perhaps, as I shall then
know the worst there is to know, with regard to the girl I love. She
will never marry a carpenter’s nephew; her father would not permit it
either.”
He seemed to be waiting for a reply, and Gertie said at last:
“Col. Schuyler is very proud, and she is prouder than he, I think; but
Glenthorpe may reconcile her to a great deal. You must tell her
yourself, however. I shall not help you there.”
“But, Gertie, do you think she cares for me? You girls can judge of each
other better than men can judge of you. Does she like me ever so little,
think you?”
Remembering how, from the first, Julia had appropriated Robert to
herself, seeming jealous and angry of his slightest attention to
another, Gertie replied:
“If you should ask her to be your wife, and tell her nothing of the
Lyles, I am sure she would say yes,” and with that answer Robert was
obliged to be content, but there was a shadow on his face, which lasted
for a week or more, and which Julia’s blandishments and coquetries had
no power to remove. Indeed, he hardly seemed to notice them or her, and
when Godfrey rallied him, and asked what was the matter, he answered
that he was pining for Glenthorpe, and began to talk seriously of going
back to Scotland; but to this Godfrey would not listen, and when Julia’s
eyes looked at him pleadingly as she said: “Don’t go till fall, Mr.
Macpherson;” while Emma, who seldom said much, expressed a strong desire
for him to remain, he give up Glenthorpe for the summer, and stayed at
Schuyler Hill.
Meantime Gertie’s present had been shown, and discussed, and admired by
Edith, and Emma, and Godfrey, while Alice wondered if they were _real_
Cairngorms, and Julia had said, in Robert’s hearing, that she’d like to
see _herself_ wearing stones which came from such a source, and the
colonel had offered to send them to New York and have them set
handsomely. But this Gertie would not permit. She had a plan in her mind
which she hoped some day to carry out, and test Miss Julia’s
unwillingness to “wear stones from such a source” as that white-haired
woman over the sea, whom the proud beauty teasingly called “Gertie’s
godmother.”