31. CHAPTER XXXI.
OVER AT OAKWOOD.
MR. BURTON, of whom little has been said, was not
a very frequent visitor at his own house in the
country. He liked the dust, and heat, and noise of
Wall street better than the green fields, and the tall mountains,
and cool river, which encircled his country home in
Oakwood. So the house on Madison Square was always
kept open for him, and two or three servants retained to
keep it, and there he slept, and ate his solitary meals, and
lived his solitary life, while Mrs. Burton and Georgie were
away enjoying the good which money and position can buy.
Occasionally, however, there came over him a desire for
a change, and then he packed his valise, and took the cars
or boat for Oakwood, usually surprising its inmates, who,
never knowing when to look for him, were seldom expecting
him. He had come up from New York thus suddenly the
very morning after Georgie's interview with Maude, and announced
his intention of spending the entire day, and possibly
remaining over until the morrow, provided there was
anything worth staying for.
“Oh, there is! There's the croquet party at Leighton
Place this afternoon, and you'll go, and I'll have you on my
side, because you are capital at a long shot,” Maude Somerton
said, hanging about her uncle's chair, and evincing far
more delight at seeing him than his wife had done.
Mrs. Burton was a very good woman, and a very proper
woman. She always kissed her husband when he came to
Oakwood, and when he went away, and inquired how he
was, and how the servants were getting on, and asked for
three or five hundred dollars, as the case might be, and deferred
to him in a highly respectful manner, pleasant to
behold. But she never hurried out to meet him as Maude
was wont to do, nor threw her arms around his neck, nor
smoothed the thin hair from his tired brow, nor said how glad
she was to have him there.
Maude loved him as the uncle of her mother and the only
father she had ever known, and almost the only heart-beats
of affection the business man had felt in many a year, were
called up by the touch of Maude's lips to his and the clinging
of her soft fingers about his own. So, though he hated
croquet and could see no sense in knocking about a few
wooden balls, he consented to join the party; and then
remembering that he had not seen Georgie yet, he asked
where she was.
Georgie had a violent headache, and toast and tea had
been carried to her room, and Mrs. Burton had been sitting
with her when her husband came in, and reading her a letter
received that morning from a man of high standing in Boston,
who asked Mrs. Burton's consent to address her daughter.
It was an eligible offer enough, and but for one obstacle
Georgie would have thought twice before rejecting it, for
she knew better than any one else how fast her youth was
fleeting. That obstacle was the genuine liking she had for
Roy, and the hope that she might yet be fortunate enough
to win him.
Never until this morning had she felt so much like talking
freely with her aunt of her future, and her growing fear lest,
after all her years of waiting, Roy Leighton should eventually
be lost to her.
Nervous and weak from the effects of last night's interview
with Maude, and the headache from which she was
suffering, she could only bury her face in her pillow and cry
when her aunt read the would-be-lover's letter, and asked
what answer she should return.
“I had hoped to see you settled at Leighton ere this, but
Roy does not seem as much inclined that way as he did
some time ago,” Mrs. Burton remarked.
And then the whole story came out, and Mrs. Burton
understood just how passionately her niece loved Roy
Leighton; and how galling to her pride it was to have had
her name coupled with his so long, without any apparent
result.
Mrs. Burton was roused, and resolved at once to strike a
decisive blow. Roy had no right to play “fast and loose”
with Georgie, as he certainly had done. Everybody supposed
they were engaged, and he had given them reason to
think so, and done enough to warrant Georgie in suing him
for breach of promise if she would stoop so low as that, as
of course she would not.
Mrs. Burton was not one to expose herself or family to
public ridicule. What she did would be done quietly and
with no chance of detection from the world, and she at once
set herself to it, thinking it surely was a Providence which
sent her lord home on that particular day. Kissing Georgie
affectionately, and bidding her to think no more of the Boston
match or of Roy either, as it was sure to come right,
she sought her husband, and found him in the library with
Maude, who had been telling him of her engagement with
Jack Heyford, and whose face was suffused with blushes
when her aunt came in.
Of course Mrs. Burton had to be told also, and she
behaved very properly, and kissed Maude twice, and said
she had done well; that Mr. Heyford, though poor, was
a very estimable young man, and a brother of Georgie.
This last was evidently his chief recommendation to the
lady whose infatuation with regard to Georgie was something
wonderful.
It was not Mrs. Burton's way to skirt round a thing or
to hesitate when a duty was to be performed; but on this
occasion she did feel a little awkward, and after Maude was
gone stood a moment uncertain how to begin. At last, as
if it had just occurred to her, she said:
“Maude's engagement reminds me to tell you that Georgie
has just received through me an offer from that young
Bigelow of Boston, whom you may remember having seen
at Saratoga last summer.”
Mr. Burton was very anxious to resume the paper he had
been reading, when Maude came asking an interview; but
he was too thoroughly polite to do that with his wife
standing there talking to him, and so he answered her:
“Maude first and Georgie next, hey? We are likely to
be left alone, I see. Does he belong to the genuine Bigelow
race?”
“Yes,—the genuine. You must remember him,—he
drove those handsome bays, and his mother sat at our
table, and said Georgie was the most beautiful girl at Saratoga.”
“Georgie better take him, then, by all means,—she is
growing older every day,” was Mr. Burton's reply, as he
rattled his paper ominously, and glanced at the “stock”
column.
“But Georgie don't want him,” Mrs. Burton rejoined,
“and she does want some one else,—some one, too, who
has given her every reason to believe he intended making
her his wife, and who ought to do so.”
Mr. Burton looked up inquiringly, and his wife continued:
“I mean Roy Leighton. His name has been associated
with Georgie's for years, and at times he has been very devoted
to her, and almost at the point of a proposal, then
some interruption would occur to prevent it. His mother's
heart is set upon it, and so, I must confess, is mine; while
Georgie's,—well, the poor girl is actually sick with suspense
and mortification, and I think it is time something was
done.”
Mrs. Burton was considerably heated by this time, and
took a seat near her husband, who asked what she proposed
doing.
“Nothing myself, of course,—a woman's lips are sealed;
but you can and ought to move in the matter. As Georgie's
father, it is your right to ask what Roy's intentions are, making
Mr. Bigelow's offer, of course, the reason for your questionings.
You are going to the croquet party this afternoon,
—you can, if you try, find an opportunity for speaking to
Roy alone, and I want you to do so.”
At first Mr. Burton swore he wouldn't. Roy Leighton
knew what he was about, and if he wanted Georgie he would
say so without being nudged on the subject. It was no way
to do, and he shouldn't do it.
This was his first reply; but after awhile, during which his
spouse grew very earnest and eloquent, and red in the face,
and called him “Freeman Burton,” he ceased to say he
wouldn't, and said instead, that “he'd think about it.”
And he did think about it all the morning, and the more
he thought the more averse he grew to it, and the more, too,
he knew he would have to do it, or never again know a moment's
peace when under the same roof with his wife.
“I wish to goodness I had staid in New York,—and I've
half a mind to take the next train back,—upon my word I
have; but then wife would follow me if I did, and hang on
till I consented. She never gives up a thing she's set her
heart upon; and if she's made up her mind that Roy must
marry Georgie, he's bound to do it, and I must be the `go-between.'
I believe I'll drown myself!”
The poor man fairly groaned as he finished his soliloquy,
and glanced from the window toward the river winding its
way down the valley. His peace of mind for that day was
destroyed, and not even Maude's blandishments had power
to brighten him up as he sat in a brown study, wondering
“what the deuce he should say to Roy, and how he should
begin.”
The party was not to assemble at Leighton until half-past
three, and so he had a long time in which to arrange his
thoughts,—longer indeed than he desired, and he was glad
when at last the time came for him to start.
Maude, who seemed to be mistress of ceremonies, had
been unusually quiet and reserved during the morning, but
when at lunch her uncle formally announced to the guests at
Oakwood her recent engagement with Jack, she became at
once her old self, and entered heart and soul into the preparations
for the party.
She had visited Georgie in her room, and kindly offered to
bathe her head, or do anything which could in any way alleviate
the pain.
Of the events of the last night not a word was said, and
both felt that one page at least of that interview was turned
forever. Maude, who had nothing to fear, was the more
natural of the two, and talked freely of the croquet party at
Leighton, and wished so much that Georgie could go.
“Perhaps you can,” she said, “if you keep very quiet.
Your headaches do not usually last the entire day.”
But this was no ordinary case, and when the time came
for the party to start, Georgie, though better, and able to sit
up, declared herself too weak and nervous to dress for the
occasion, and so they went without her, poor Mr. Burton
lagging a little behind with his wife, who was very kindly
instructing him as to the better way of opening the conversation
with poor, unsuspicious Roy.
