CHAPTER LI.THE STORM BURSTS.
“Are you cold?” Edith asked, as she saw how her mother trembled, and taking one of the hands which lay outside the bed, she was going to chafe and rub it, when her mother snatched it away, and raising herself upright, cried out:
“Don’t touch me, Edith, till you have heard my story, then curse me if you will and let me die; but first open that square box there in the corner, and in my writing desk find the letteryou wrote tohim,—you know,—the letter which I kept,—you remember it.”
Edith remembered it well, and she trembled in every joint as she did her mother’s bidding, and brought the time-soiled letter, which seemed to burn the hand which held it, and to communicate to her a presentiment of the terrible shock awaiting her. That her mother’s story had something to do with her past life she was sure, but she never dreamed of the truth as she brought the letter and offered it to her mother.
“No, it’s for you; keep it, Edith. You will want it some time, perhaps, to prove that you at least meant fair. I have written a few lines on it myself to show your innocence,” Mrs. Barrett said, and Edith put the letter mechanically into the pocket of her dressing-gown, while her mother continued: “Edith, before I begin, promise me one thing,—not your forgiveness,—I do not expect that,—but promise to do what I ask when my story is finished.”
“How can I promise to do a thing unless I know it will be right?” Edith asked.
“It is right,” Mrs. Barrett said; “I’d do it myself, only I am old and sick and going to die, and I did not think about it in England as I do here on my death-bed. But you are young; you have health and money and time. You can look it up, and you will, Edith. Youwillwhen you know.”
She spoke in a whisper, and Edith shook from head to foot, as she, too, said in a whisper:
“Yes, mother, I will.”
She did not know what she was pledged to do. She only knew that the terror of something horrible was upon her, benumbing her faculties, chilling her blood, and forcing her heart into her throat, which the iron hand held so firmly. It was something aboutthe child, her little girl,—something about the way it died; and her brown eyes were black in the intensity of her feelings as she fastened them upon her mother, who, cowering beneath that gaze, cried out:
“Look away, Edith; look somewhere else, and not at me, or I can never tell you.”
But the eyes did not move, and shutting her own, the wretched woman began:
“You remember I took your letter and did not give it to him, but told him what I pleased. Have you ever told him the truth?”
Edith could not so much as articulate the one wordno, and when, as she continued silent, her mother’s eyes unclosed and looked inquiringly at her, she only shook her head in token that she had not.
“Then you must do it now! There’s no other way. You’ll need his co-operation,” Mrs. Barrett said, and Edith’s eyes were like flaming coals of fire as they confronted her so steadily.
“Edith,” her mother went on, “do you remember the dreary room in Dorset Street, and the day it rained so hard?”
Did she remember it? Ask rather if she ever could forget it, when, even now, after the lapse of so many years, she never heard the sound of rain against the windows or saw it falling in the street, that she did not recall that dreadful day of fog and rain and darkness when her child was taken from her. But she could not speak, and her mother continued:
“I took the baby from you and carried her to the hospital, and then, when you insisted upon going after her, I went in your place, and when I came back I told you,—oh, Edith, don’t look at me, don’t curse me yet. I told you sh-she,—sh-she——”
“You told me she was dead. Wasthata lie, too?”
Edith could speak now, though the effort to do so almost tore open her throat, where her heart seemed palpitating so wildly. Seizing her mother’s shoulder she shook it fiercely as she put the question:
“Was that alie, too?”
“Yes, Edith, that was a lie, too!”
Mrs. Barrett’s voice was a whisper, but had the words been uttered in tones of thunder they could not have written themselves more distinctly on Edith’s mind than they did.
“That was a lie, too!” she repeated, rising to her feet, andseeming, to her horror-stricken, remorseful parent to grow tall and terrible in her excitement, as she clutched the shoulder more fiercely, and said: “That was alie, too, was it? Mother, as you hope for heaven tell me the whole truth now. Baby was not deadthenwhen you said she was?”
“No, Edith, not dead then——”
“Is she dead now?” and the hand pressed so hard upon the thin shoulder that Mrs. Barrett cringed with pain, but did not shake it off, and scarcely knew what was hurting her, as she replied:
“I don’t know, Edith.”
“You don’t know!Tell me what youdoknow, and tell me truly, too, as you will one day confess to heaven when you are questioned of the great wrong done to me.”
Edith was wonderful in her excitement, with her blazing eyes and livid face, and her mother gazed at her an instant fascinated and unable to reply; then, closing her eyes again, she said:
“I will tell you all I know. I went to the hospital and meant to bring her to you. I did, Edith,—believe me there. I meant to bring her to you, for I knew no other way. But when I inquired for the childHeloiseleft there at such a time, I was told that it had been taken by a woman whose name wasStover. The woman had given good references, they said, and was the mother of one of the nurses. She, too, lived in Dorset Street, not far from our old quarters. I’ve got the number,—there, on that letter you wrote to Colonel Schuyler,—and three or four months afterward I went there and inquired for the woman, but she was dead, and the people who occupied the floor above said her daughter had taken the baby and gone away with it in a handsome carriage, andthatis all I know,—truly, Edith,all I know. I’ve never been able to trace her, though I tried once, just after you left me to come here. I missed Gertie so much, and wanted her so much that I began to think of looking for the grandchild, who would have been about her age, and I tried to find her, but could not. I don’t believe she is dead. I never have, and you, with money and influence, can track her sure, and you will; this is what you promised. I shall be dead, butshall rest easier in my grave if you find her. Edith, why don’t you speak, if it is only to curse me. Anything is better than this awful silence,” she implored, and then, as there came no answer, she opened her eyes and turned them toward her daughter, who stood over her as white and rigid as if frozen into stone.
Her hand had let go its grasp of her mother’s shoulder and hung listlessly down by her side, her eyes seemed fixed on vacancy, though in reality they were seeing that little blue-eyed baby up in some square room in Dorset Street, surrounded with wretchedness and poverty, while she, the mother, was rolling in wealth, with luxury and elegance everywhere. Truly it was a terrible picture to contemplate, but not so terrible as the second one presented to her mind, the picture of a young girl grown to womanhood, as that blue-eyed baby must be, and sunk, perhaps to the lowest depths of misery and possible shame, for who was there to teach her, to keep her feet from straying when the mother had abandoned her? It was this which affected Edith the most, and froze her almost to catalepsy during the moment she stood without the power to speak or stir, her head bent forward, her hands hanging down, her eyes fixed and glassy, and a white froth oozing from her lips, which moved at last, and said, slowly, painfully:
“May Heaven forgive you, mother, for I never can!”
Another moment and Edith fell heavily across the foot of the bed, while Mrs. Barrett’s loud shriek roused Gertie from sleep and brought her to the room.
“It’s a fit,—she is dying,—she is dead,” Mrs. Barrett murmured, pointing to Edith, who for hours lay in a stupor which seemed like death, and from which nothing had power to rouse her.
Gertie had summoned help at once, and the colonel was the first in the room, and held his fainting wife in his arms, and felt a mortal fear steal over him when he saw the deadly paleness and the foam about the lips, the purple rings beneath the eyes, and the head drooping so heavily on his shoulder. It was overtasking her strength, and sitting up so much with her mother, he thought, and the doctor thought so too, and when before the sunsetting they buried in the cemetery the little daughterwhose eyes never opened in this world, and whom Edith never saw, they were sure it was over-exertion at a time when she needed all her strength, and the colonel’s affection for his mother-in-law wasnotperceptibly increased.Shehad offered no explanation whatever with regard to the fit, except that it came suddenly, when Edith was standing by her. Indeed she was nearly distracted herself, and Gertie, who watched by her, would not have been surprised to see her life go out at any moment.
For some reason there seemed to be a strong prejudice in the house against the woman. Nobody wanted to wait on her, nobody wanted to go near her, and so Gertie became her sole nurse, though she wished so much to be with Mrs. Schuyler, who was raving in the room across the hall, and whom it sometimes took two men to hold.
But Gertie’s duty was plain, and she stayed with the poor old woman, who clung to her like a child, talking strange things at times, and asking questions hard for Gertie to answer.
“Would God forgive her sin? Was there yet hope for her?”
This was the burden of her sorrow; and many times in the day, and during the night-watches she kept so tirelessly, Gertie knelt and prayed that every sin, however great, committed by the wretched woman, might be forgiven and washed away in Jesus’ blood.
“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow,” she repeated often in the ears of the dying woman, who would reply:
“Yes, I know, I know, but some sin beyond hope, and I am one of these. All my life has been alie, and I meant it should be. And now it is all thick darkness whichever way I look. I never did a genuine good thing in my life. All was for effect, except my love foryou, Gertie; there was no motive for that. My love for you was real, and when you left me alone in England I tried once to pray, truly pray on my knees alone when nobody saw me; but something whispered, mockingly, ‘You pray?’ and I did not try again. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do, the horror is so great?”
“Jesus came to save sinners, even the chief of sinners, and He will do it; He said so, and He never told a lie,” Gertie whispered, softly.
And Mrs. Barrett caught the “chief of sinners” as if she had never heard it before, and held to it, and kept repeating to herself, “Thechiefof sinners; that’s I; He must have meant me, the very chiefest.”
Then she would ask Gertie to pray,—that the sin might be forgiven, andthe girlkept from harm, and without knowing at all for whom she prayed or what particular sin, Gertie did pray many times, and did her best to soothe and comfort the remorseful woman, who grew more quiet at last, and exhibited less terror of death and the world beyond.
“I may yet be saved, but it will be as by fire,” she said to Gertie one day,—the seventh since the morning when Edith had been borne insensible from her room.
In her own agony of mind Mrs. Barrett had not evinced much interest in Edith’s illness, nor did she know how sick she was until, when more quiet herself, she asked for her daughter, and why she did not come to see her. Then Gertie told her of the fever which was raging so high, and with the tears pouring over her withered face, Mrs. Barrett said:
“I shall never see her again; but tell her, Gertie, how bitterly I repented, and how at the last peace came, even to me. Tell her, too,—and don’t forget this message, which will comfort her, perhaps,—tell her the last words she ever said to me must not make her unhappy. I deserved them. I do not blame her, and she need not remember them with regret, though she will forgive me some time. Heaven has, I hope.”
She was very quiet after that for the remainder of the day, and lay with her eyes shut; but several times, when Gertie looked at her to see if she was asleep, she saw her lips move, and knew that she was praying. That night was her last, for she died toward morning,—alone with Gertie, as she wished to be.
“Don’t call any one, please,” she said, when Gertie proposed going for Mrs. Tiffe. “I’d rather be alone with you, who have been so kind to me, and who, I am sure, like me a little.”
“Yes,—I do, I do!” Gertie said, kissing the white face, on which the death-dew was standing.
And Mrs. Barrett continued:
“It is strange that you should be the one to care for me at the last, as tenderly as if you were my own grandchild. Have you a grandmother, Gertie?”
“Yes, or I had one once, though I never saw her; but Auntie Rogers said so, and told me all I ever knew of my family, which is very little. Sometimes I have strange ideas, as if I belonged to nobody, and then I try so hard to recall what it was I once overheard auntie saying to her sister in London years ago. Miss Anne Stover was at our house——”
“Stover! Stover!” Mrs. Barrett repeated, raising herself in bed and quivering in every nerve.
“Yes, she was auntie’s sister, you know; and said something about somebody’s being identified by amark, and there’s a mark on my bosom, low down——”
“A mark of what?” Mrs. Barrett asked, eagerly.
And Gertie replied:
“It is like a drop of blood.”
“Blood! Did you say a drop of blood?” and Mrs. Barrett shook as with an ague chill as she fell back upon her pillow, while Gertie bent over her, and bathed her brow and lips until, rallying all her energies, she said: “Gertie, Gertie! tell Edith,—tell her! Oh, if I could live to see her myself! Gertie, my child, God bless you! I know He has forgiven me now!”
Her arms closed tightly around Gertie’s neck, and held her there in a close embrace until the girl herself unclasped them, and, putting them gently down upon the bed, saw that Mrs. Barrett was dead.
And just across the hall in her own room Edith lay, now singing snatches of some lullaby to an unseen child, which she hushed in her arms, now talking of the rain upon the window-pane, the tramp upon the stairs, the roar in the streets, and again laughing deliriously at something she said, and which seemed to strike her as ridiculous. And by her Colonel Schuyler sat, with the fear of death in his heart, when Gertie came inand told him there was really death in the next room, and asked if he had any orders to give.
“None,—no, do what you like,” he answered, quickly; then glancing at the white face on the pillow, and remembering that she who lay dead beneath his roof was his young wife’s mother, he rose and added: “I’ll go myself and see her;” and following Gertie, he soon stood by the motionless form of her who had been his mother-in-law, and whose presence in his house had annoyed him so much.
But she would trouble him no more. All he could do for her now was to give her a burial, and for Edith’s sake that burial should be as perfect in its appointments as if the dead had been his own mother, whom twenty carriages had followed out to Greenwood. There were almost as many as that drawn up before the house on Schuyler Hill on the day of the funeral, for far and near the people knew of the cloud hanging over that household; of the aged mother just arrived from England, and dead before she had even seen her daughter’s handsome home; of the little grave in the cemetery, made there too soon, and of the chamber where Edith lay, raving in mad delirium, and tearing her hair until they tied her hands to keep them from further mischief. And so they came from every quarter and filled the house to overflowing, save the south wing, where Edith was; that was bolted against them, and the murmur of the gathering multitude did not penetrate there enough to awaken the slightest interest in Edith. Only a very few beside myself were permitted to see the dead woman, lying so still in the costly casket which the colonel had ordered from New York, and to us, who looked upon her, there came no suspicion that we had ever seen that face before. It was very calm and peaceful in its last sleep, and many said, “She must have been fine-looking when in health,” while in every heart there was a profound pity for the stranger who had died so soon in a foreign land, and for whom there was no mourner at the grand funeral, except Gertie.
During the services the colonel left Edith long enough to come down to the parlor and listen while the prayers were said and the hymns were sung; then he went back to Edith,and strangers did the rest, making the funeral seem so sad and lonely without a blood relation except little Arthur, whose shoulder-knots and sash were black, and whom Gertie led by the hand when she went out to the Schuyler carriage, which was to take her to the grave as first and only mourner.
“Go with me, Miss Armstrong,” she whispered, as she passed me in the hall, and I followed after her until, as the carriage was reached, and she was about to enter, when I felt a sudden rush behind me, and was conscious that something unusual was agitating the crowd, and causing it to divide and fall back as if to give room for some one. It was for Godfrey, who, flushed and excited, made his way through the throng of people, and lifting Gertie from the ground as if she had been a feather’s weight, put her in the carriage before she knew whose arms were encircling her in so tender, masterful a manner as if they had the right. Little Arthur was put in next, and then Godfrey followed himself, closing the door behind him, and effectually shutting me out. But I knew it was better so, and was glad he was there, a help and a comfort to Gertie. By the merest accident he had heard that morning from Tom Barton of Mrs. Barrett’s death and Edith’s illness, and had taken the next train for Hampstead, which he reached just in time to join the funeral procession. Nor was his coming inopportune. He had a feeling, he said, that everything would devolve on Gertie, who would need somebody to sustain her. And she did, and when recovered from the first shock of finding Godfrey beside her, caring for her so kindly, she gave way, and her head drooped for a moment on his shoulder, as she sobbed out: “Oh, Godfrey, what made you come? I am so glad, so glad.”
“What for you tie, then, if you’se glad?” Arthur said, looking curiously from Gertie to Godfrey, and from Godfrey back to Gertie, as if not quite sure that all was right.
“Halloo, you little shaver, who thought you could put two and two together,” Godfrey said, as he took his brother in his lap and held him there until they reached the grave; then he alighted and stood with the child between himself and Gertie, while the burial service was read.
“That’s mydanmusserin the box,” Arthur said, aloud, as the coffin was lowered from sight, and when the bystanders heard it more than one wept for the lonely woman, the “danmusser” of the little three-years-old Arthur, whose golden curls were tossed by the November wind as he stood on tiptoe leaning forward to look into the grave and throw the wreath of everlastings he had brought for this purpose.
Arthur was greatly attached to his tall brother Godfrey, and hung about him constantly after the return from the grave, and told both Mrs. Tiffe and his father that “Dirtie had tied on Godfrey’s coat ’cause she was so glad danmusser was dead.”
Godfrey had intended to return that same night if possible, but when he spoke of it before Gertie it seemed to him that her eyes pleaded with him to stay, and when he stood for a moment as he did at Edith’s bedside and saw how sick she was, he felt that to leave was impossible until the balance was turned one way or the other, and he knew whether his fair young step-mother lived or died.