University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
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
yeiling 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.