GEORGIE.
Georgie Burton was a brilliant, fascinating woman, several years older
than Maude Somerton, and wholly unlike her both in looks and
disposition. She was not only very beautiful, but she had about her an
air of culture and high breeding which would have atoned for the absence
of all beauty.
Some said her chief attraction was in her great black eyes, which were
so soft and gentle in their expression at times, and then again sparkled
and shone with excitement; while it was whispered that they could on
occasion blaze, and flash, and snap with anger and scorn.
Few, however, ever saw the flash and the blaze, and to most of the
people in the neighborhood Georgie Burton was the kind, sympathetic,
frank-hearted woman who, though a devotee of fashion, would always lend
a listening ear to a tale of woe, or step aside from her own pleasure to
minister to others.
She was very tall, and her blue-black hair fell in heavy masses of curls
about her face and neck, giving her a more youthful appearance at first
sight than a closer inspection would warrant. Her complexion, though
dark, was clear, and smooth, and bright,—so bright in fact, that there
had been whispers of artificial roses and enamel. But here rumor was
wrong. Georgie’s complexion was all her own, kept bright and fair by
every possible precaution and care. Constant exercise in the open air,
daily baths, and a total abstinence from stimulants of any kind,
together with as regular habits as her kind of life would admit, were
the only cosmetics she used, and the result proved the wisdom of her
course.
She was not Mrs. Freeman Burton’s daughter; she was her niece, and had
been adopted five years before our story opens. But never was an own and
only child loved and petted more than Mrs. Burton loved and petted the
beautiful girl, who improved so fast under the advantages given her by
her doting aunt.
For two years she had been kept in school, where she had bent every
energy of mind and body to acquiring the knowledge necessary to fit her
for the world which awaited her outside the school-room walls. And when
at last she came out _finished_, and was presented to society as Mr.
Freeman Burton’s daughter and heir, she became a belle at once; and for
three years had kept her ground without yielding an inch to any rival.
To Mr. Burton she was kind and affectionate, and he would have missed
her very much from his household; while to Mrs. Burton she was the
loving, gentle, obedient daughter, who knew no will save that of her
mother.
“A perfect angel of sweetness,” Mrs. Burton called her, and no person
was tolerated who did not tacitly, at least, accord to Georgie all the
virtues it was possible for one woman to possess. The relations between
Maude and Georgie were kind and friendly, but not at all familiar or
intimate. Georgie was too reserved and reticent with regard to herself
and her affairs to admit of her being on very confidential terms with
any one, and so Maude knew very little of her real character, and
nothing whatever of her life before she came to live with her aunt,
except what she learned from Mrs. Burton, who sometimes talked of her
only sister, Georgie’s mother, and of the life of comparative poverty
from which she had rescued her niece. At these times Georgie would sit
motionless as a statue, with her hands locked together, and a peculiar
expression in her black eyes, which seemed to be looking far away at
something seen only to herself. She was not at all communicative, and
even her aunt did not know exactly what the business was which had
called her so suddenly to Chicago; but she was aware that it concerned
some child, and that she had left it undone and turned back with
Charlie; and when at last she came and was ushered into Mrs. Churchill’s
room, where Mrs. Burton was, both ladies called her a self-denying
angel, who always considered others before herself.
There was a flush on Georgie’s cheeks, and then her eyes went through
the window, and off across the river, with that far away, abstracted
look which Maude had noticed so often, and speculated upon, wondering of
what Georgie was thinking, and if there was anything preying upon her
mind.
Mrs. Churchill was very fond of Georgie, and she held her hand fast
locked in her own, and listened with painful heart-throbs while she told
what she knew of the terrible disaster which had resulted in Charlie’s
lying so cold and dead in the room below.
“I left Buffalo the same morning Charlie did,” she said, “but did not
know he was on the train until the accident.”
“Were you alone?” Mrs. Churchill asked.
“No. You remember my half-brother Jack, who was at Oakwood two years
ago; he met me in Buffalo, and after the accident remembered having seen
some one in the front car who reminded him of Charlie, but it never
occurred to him that it could be he until he found him dead.”
Here Georgie paused, and wiped away Mrs. Churchill’s tears and smoothed
her hair, and then continued her story: “It was a stormy night, a
regular thunder-storm, and the rain was falling in torrents when the
crash came, and I found myself upon my face with Jack under me, while
all around was darkness and confusion, with horrible shrieks and cries
of terror and distress. Our car was only thrown on one side, while the
one Charlie was in was precipitated down the bank, and it was a miracle
that any one escaped. Charlie was dead when Jack reached him; he must
have died instantly, they said, and there is some comfort in that. They
carried him into a house not far from the track, and I saw that his body
had every possible care. I thought you would like it.”
“I do, I do. You are an angel. Go on,” Mrs. Churchill said, and Georgie
continued:
“There’s not much more to tell of Charlie. I had his body packed in ice
till Russell came, and then we brought him home.”
“But _Edna_, his wife, _Mrs. Charlie Churchill_, where is she? What of
her? And why didn’t she come with you?”
It was Maude who asked these questions; Maude, who, when the carriage
came, had stood ready to meet the “girl-widow,” as she mentally styled
her, and lead her to her room. But there was no Edna there, and to the
eager questionings Maude had put to Russell the moment she could claim
his attention, that dignitary had answered gravely:
“You must ask Miss Burton. She managed that matter.”
So Maude ran up the stairs to Mrs. Churchill’s room, which she entered
in time to hear the last of Georgie’s story, and where she startled the
inmates with her vehement inquiries for Edna. Mrs. Churchill had not yet
mentioned her name, and it did not seem to her that she had any part or
right in that lifeless form downstairs, or any claim upon her sympathy.
Her presence, therefore, would have been felt as an intrusion, and
though she had made up her mind to endure it, she breathed freer when
she knew Edna had not come. The name, “Mrs. Charlie Churchill,” shocked
her a little, but she listened anxiously to what Georgie had to say of
her.
“Hush, Maude, how impetuous you are; perhaps poor Mrs. Churchill cannot
bear any more just now,” Georgie said, and Mrs. Churchill replied:
“Yes, tell me all about the girl. I may as well hear it now as any time.
O, my poor boy, that he should have thrown himself away like that.”
Georgie had her cue now, and knew just how to proceed.
“The girl was by Charlie’s side trying to extricate him, and that was
how we found out who she was and that he was married that morning. She
was slightly injured, a bruise on her head and shoulder, and arm, that
was all, and she seemed very much composed and slept very soundly a good
part of the day following. I should not think her one to be easily
excited. I did what I could for her, and spoke of her coming home with
me as a matter of course.
“She said, ‘Did they send any word to me by that gentleman?’ meaning
Russell. I questioned Russell on the subject and could not learn that
any message had been sent directly to her, and so she declined coming,
and when I asked her if she did not feel able to travel so far, she
burst out crying, and said: ‘I could endure the journey well enough,
though my head aches dreadfully, but they don’t want me there, and I
cannot go;’ a decision she persisted in to the last. She seemed a mere
child, not more than fifteen, though she said she was seventeen.”
“And did you leave her there alone?” Maude asked, her cheeks burning
with excitement, for she had detected the spirit of indifference
breathing in every word Georgie had said of Edna, and resented it
accordingly.
Edna had a champion in Maude, and Georgie knew it, and her eyes rested
very calmly on the girl as she replied:
“I telegraphed to her aunt, a Miss Jerusha Pepper, who lives near
Canandaigua, and also to her friends in Chicago, a Mr. and Mrs. John
Dana, and before I left Mrs. Dana came, a very plain, but perfectly
respectable appearing woman.”
“Which means, I suppose, that you do not think she would steal, or pick
a man’s pocket, unless sorely pressed,” Maude broke in vehemently. “For
goodness’ sake, Georgie, put off that lofty way of talking as if poor
Edna was outside the pale of humanity, and her friends barely
respectable. I am sorry for her, and I wish she was here, and I want to
know if you left her with any one who will be kind to her, and say a
comforting word.”
“Maude, have you forgotten yourself, that you speak so to Georgie in
Mrs. Churchill’s and my presence?” Mrs. Burton said reprovingly, while
Mrs. Churchill looked bewildered, as if she hardly knew what it was all
about, or for whom Maude was doing battle.
In no wise disconcerted, Georgie continued in the same cool strain:
“This Mrs. Dana I told you of, seemed very kind to her, and I think the
girl felt better with her than she would with us. She was going to
Chicago with Mrs. Dana, and Jack was going with them. You remember
Jack?”
Yes, Maude did remember Jack, the great, big-hearted fellow, who had
been at Oakwood for a few weeks, two years before, and whom Georgie had
kept in the background as much as possible, notwithstanding that she
petted and caressed, and made much of him, and called him “Jackey” and
“dear Jack,” when none but the family were present to see him and know
he was her half-brother.
“So good in Georgie, and shows such an admirable principle in her not to
be ashamed of that great good-natured bear of a fellow,” Mrs. Burton had
said to Maude; and Maude, remembering the times when the “great,
good-natured bear of a fellow” had been introduced to any of Georgie’s
fashionable friends who chanced to stumble upon him, simply as “Mr.
Heyford,” and not as “my brother,” had her own opinion upon that subject
as upon many others.
She had liked Jack Heyford very much, and felt that he was a man to be
trusted in any emergency, and when she heard that Edna was with him, she
said impulsively:
“I know she is safe if Mr. Heyford has her in charge. I would trust him
sooner than any man I ever saw, and know I should not be deceived.”
“You might do that, Maude, you might. Jack is the truest, noblest of
men,” Georgie said, and her voice trembled as she said it, while Maude
actually thought a tear glittered in her black eyes, as she paid this
unwonted tribute to her brother.
“That reminds me;” said Mrs. Burton, wiping her own eyes from sympathy
with Georgie’s emotion, “what about that little child, and what will
your brother do, as you did not go on with him?”
The dewy look in Georgie’s eye was gone in a moment, and in its place
there came a strange gleam, half pain and half remorse, as she answered:
“I shall go to Chicago in a few days.”
“Is that necessary?” Mrs. Burton asked, and Georgie replied:
“Yes, the child keeps asking for _me_, and I must go.”
“What child?” Maude asked, with her usual impulsiveness.
There was a quivering of the muscles around Georgie’s mouth, and a
spasmodic fluttering of her white throat, as if the words she was going
to utter were hard to say; then, with her face turned away from Maude’s
clear, honest blue eyes, she said very calmly:
“It is a little girl my step-mother adopted. Her name is Annie, and she
always calls Jack brother, and me her sister Georgie. Perhaps mamma told
you my step-mother had recently died.”
“No, she didn’t. I’d forgotten you had a step-mother living,” Maude
said, and Georgie continued:
“Yes, Jack’s mother, you know. She died a month or so ago, and this
child met with an accident,—hurt her back or hip, and it was to see her
that I was going to Chicago.”
Georgie finished her statement quietly, and then, turning to Mrs.
Churchill, asked if she should not again wet the napkin and bathe her
head and face. She was very calm and collected, and her white hands
moved gently over Mrs. Churchill’s hot, flushed face, until she declared
herself better, and bade Georgie go and rest herself. Georgie was not
tired, and said she would just look in upon Roy, to whom she repeated,
in substance, what she had told his mother of the dreadful accident. Roy
had heard the most of the particulars from Russell, but they gained new
force and interest when told by the beautiful Georgie, whose voice was
so low, and tender, and sorrowful, and whose long lashes, half veiling
the soft eyes, were moist with tears as she spoke of “dear Charlie and
his poor young girl-wife.” That was what she called her when with Roy,
not “the girl,” but “his poor young girl-wife.” She had seen at once
that with Roy she must adopt a different tone with regard to Edna, for
Roy was eager in his inquiries and sorry that she had not come to
Leighton, “her proper place,” he said.
Georgie tried to be open and fair with Roy, who, she knew, hated a lie
or anything approaching it, and so she incidentally mentioned the nature
of her business to Chicago, and told of the recent death of her
step-mother, of whom Mr. Leighton had, of course, heard. Roy could not
remember, but supposed he had, and then Georgie told him of little Annie
Heyford, her adopted sister, and said she must still go and see to her.
And Roy thought how kind she was, and hoped the little Annie would not
suffer for her absence, or her brother be greatly inconvenienced.
Georgie reassured him on both points, and then, as he seemed to be very
tired and his limb was beginning to pain him, she left him for a time,
and returned to Mrs. Churchill.