CHAPTER LV.THE SEARCH IN LONDON.
They went first to the —— St. Hospital, where officers and nurses and matron had all been changed since the night when the child Heloise was left at the door. But the books remained, and after a long time they found the one bearing date nineteen years back. Oh, how eagerly Edith turned the worn, yellow leaves till she came to the date she remembered so well.
“January —, 18—. Was received into the house a female child, found in a basket on the doorstep with the name Heloise pinned upon its dress.”
That was the one, and Edith’s voice trembled so much that she could not speak distinctly, as she asked of the person in attendance:
“Where is this child now? Who took her from here?—and when?”
Mrs. Simmons, the matron, could not tell. She had herself been there little more than a year, but a careful searching of the books brought to light the fact that not long after the night when the baby Heloise was found on the steps, it had been taken away by aMrs. Stover, whose daughter Anne was a nurse in the Hospital at the time, and who lived at No. —— Dorset Street. This agreed with the story as told by Mrs. Barrett, and thus far all seemed perfectly plain and easy to the excited woman, whom Colonel Schuyler followed mechanically wheresoever she went. She was taking the lead, not he, but he submitted with a good grace, and went without a word to No —— Dorset Street. It was up two flights of broken, creaking, dirty stairs, and Edith shuddered as she thought how the feet of her own child had probably been up and down this dark stairway, while she, the mother, had lived in luxury and ease.
No. —— was a dirty, wretched apartment, reeking with filth, swarming with children, and smelling of onions and boiled cabbage, and that odor peculiar to rooms where the people sleep and cook and eat and live, and seldom wash themselves. The family were Germans, who could not speak a word of English, and stared wonderingly at the beautiful lady, who succeeded in making herself understood. But she might as well have talked to blocks of wood for aught they knew of any tenants there before them. She managed, however, to make out that on the floor above was an old woman, who had occupied the same room for many years, and to her Edith went next, feeling when she stood in the neat, home-like, though humble apartment of Mrs. Myers as if she had stepped into paradise. Mrs. Myers was very old, and had lived there thirty years, and remembered the Stovers, who occupied the floor below.
“Tidy, clever people, and not at all like the ’orrid Dutch cattle there now,” she said. “There was old Marm Stover, and her two gals Hanny and Mary. Han worked in some ’orspital, and Mary for some grand lady in the country.”
“Was there ever a child living with them,—a little girl with blue eyes and golden hair?” Edith asked.
And the woman replied:
“There was, mem, and a deal of gossip it made about the girls, though folks mostly laid it to Han, but I never b’lieved a word on’t. It was took from the ’orspital, they said, and had a curis name,—Eloise,—and Mary claimed it as ’ern; and when old Mann Stover died with the cholera, Mary, who was out to service, took the child away, and I’ve never seen her sense, or ’earn tell of her. Was the child anything to you, mem?”
“Yes, everything,—it wasmine,” Edith said, impetuously, while her husband, who did not care to have her quite so outspoken, even to this old woman, said, as he took her hand to lead her away:
“Yes, yes,—thank you, Mrs. Myers; this lady has been sick, and we,—yes, we are both anxious to find some trace of the child lost so long ago: but I think it doubtful if we do,—yes, very doubtful. Come, Edith, we may as well go.”
But Edith did not move. She must know something more, and she said:
“Have you no idea where this Mary Stover lived? Had she no friends who could tell me about her?”
“None as I knows on. I ain’t seen or ’earn of her better’n eighteen year. Mebbe the perlice could worrit her out for you.”
Edith had not thought of that, and hurried her husband into the street, and insisted upon going at once to the head of the police.
But the colonel demurred. If they could proceed quietly, he would rather do so, he said, and they would not call in the aid of the police until they had exhausted every means in their power.
And they did exhaust every means; they inquired everywhere, and hunted up every family of Stovers in the city, and went to the hospital again, and went to Mrs. Myers to see if she could not think of something forgotten when they were there before. But all was of no avail. Nobody had ever heard of Mary Stover, and Edith’s heart was heavy as lead when at last the case was given to the police, who had little hope of success.
Worn out, disappointed, and discouraged, Edith took her bedat the hotel where they were stopping, while the colonel, who was not so very much aggrieved at the failure of the search, thought to please and interest her by making some inquiries with regard toGertie Westbrooke, about whose antecedents there was so much doubt and mystery. To trace her history seemed far easier than to trace the mythical Mary Stover, and he went first to the company where her annuity was payable. In answer to his inquiries as to whether they could give him any information with regard to the family, he was told that quite recently a Mrs. William Westbrooke had done some business with them in the way of a deposit. She was a widow, they said, and had come from Florence, where she had lived for many years. It was the same name, possibly the same family,—he could inquire; they could give him the lady’s address.
This he reported to Edith, who roused herself to some interest in the matter after being assured that no parent or guardian could take Gertie from them after all these years.
“If I thought they could I would not try to find them, for I can’t give Gertie up,” she said; while her husband felt thathewould be almost as loath to part with Gertie as Edith herself.
And so with more real interest now than he had felt when searching for Mary Stover, he drove with Edith one day to the handsome lodgings occupied by Mrs. William Westbrooke, recently from Florence. She was a little, pale, sandy-haired woman, of forty or thereabouts, very much dressed, and having in her manner something haughty and supercilious as she received the strangers, and, without requesting them to be seated, asked what she could do for them.
It was the colonel who did the talking this time, while Edith listened in a preoccupied kind of way, which, nevertheless, did not prevent her from hearing all that was said.
“We are Americans,” the colonel began, “and we have a young girl in our family of whose antecedents we would learn something. As you have the same name, and bank at the same firm where her annuity of forty pounds a year is paid, it occurred to me to inquire if you have ever heard of a girl called Gertie, or Gertrude Westbrooke, nineteen or twenty years old.”
“Gertie!—Gertrude!” Mrs. Westbrooke said. “I did know a child by that name years ago; but tell me, please, how she came to be in America living with you?”
It was Edith who talked now, and who told rapidly all she knew of Gertie Westbrooke and her so-called mother, Mrs. Rogers.
“Is it the same? Do you think it the same?” she asked; and Mrs. Westbrooke replied:
“I think it the same; yes.”
“Who is she then? Areyouher step-mother?” Edith asked; and, with a frown on her wizened little face, the lady replied:
“No, she is nothing to me. She was adopted by my husband’s first wife just after the loss of her baby, and, as I understood, at the instigation of her nurse, who must have been this Mrs. Rogers. The first Mrs. Westbrooke was greatly attached to the child, and when she died she settled upon it forty pounds a year, and gave it expressly to the care of her maid.
“About a year after her death Mr. Westbrooke married me, and took me to his home in London. I did not like children, and this one was in my way, and as my husband did not care for it either, we gave it at last to the nurse, who took it to keep for her own. My first child was born soon after, and the next year we went to Florence, where my husband died, and where I have lived until within the last few months. Of Gertie I have never heard since. I was told that the nurse, Mary, was married and living comfortably; but from what you say I have no doubt that the young lady in question is the girl, and am glad she has fallen into so good hands. She was very pretty, with great blue eyes and bright auburn hair——”
“What was the name of the nurse?” Edith asked, and the lady replied:
“I don’t remember whom she married, but dare say it was Rogers. My housekeeper will know; she saw her married. Her maiden name was Stover,—Mary Stover.”
“Mary Stover!” and Edith started to her feet as quickly as if a heavy blow had smitten her. “Mary Stover,—tell me if you know where the child came from at first, who were her parents, and how came Mrs. Westbrooke by her?”
“I do not know as she had any parents, unless it were Mary Stover herself. I always suspected her of being the real mother, she was so attached to the child and so mysterious about it. She brought it to Mrs. Westbrooke from some Foundling Hospital, I believe, where her sister Anne was nurse.”
“Oh, Gertie, Gertie, thank Heaven,” Edith gasped, and the next moment she lay at her husband’s feet with a face as white and rigid and still as are the faces of the dead!
There was great excitement then in Mrs. Westbrooke’s rooms, ringing of bells, gathering of servants, and hurrying for physicians, three of whom came together and concurred in pronouncing it nothing worse than a fainting fit, from which the lady would soon recover.
“Shall I order a room for her here?” Mrs. Westbrooke asked, anxious to relieve herself as soon as possible from her rather troublesome guests.
The colonel, who knew Edith would be happier in their own apartments at the hotel, declined Mrs. Westbrooke’s offer, and as soon as consciousness returned took his wife in his arms, and, carrying her to the carriage waiting for them, was driven back to his hotel, where he laid her upon the couch, and then sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak.
For a moment, however, she could not, and she lay perfectly still with the light of a great and unutterable happiness shining in her eyes and illuminating every feature.
“Edith, darling, you are very glad?” the colonel asked at last.
“Yes, Howard, so glad, oh, so glad;” Edith replied. “God has been so good to me, so good that I never can thank Him enough. That Gertie should be my daughter and living with me all the time; oh, God, I do thank Thee, I do. Howard, you are glad too, glad for Gertie?”
She questioned him eagerly, and he answered her without the slightest hesitancy:
“Yes, Edith, very glad.”
And he was glad, and when, as he was leaving Mrs. Westbrooke, that lady said to him, “Pardon me, if I seem curious,but what is the girl Gertie to this lady?” he promptly answered: “Gertie isourdaughter,” and with that little pronounourhe adopted Gertie into his heart and love, and felt that she was his as well as Edith’s.
“Our daughter!” That was what he called her to his wife, who clasped her arms around his neck in token that she appreciated this last great kindness of his.
Then they talked together of the beautiful girl whom they had come so far to seek, when all the time she was a part of their own household, and as they talked there naturally enough crept into Edith’s mind the shadow of a fear, lest, after all, there might be some mistake. But there was none apparently, for the colonel made every inquiry possible with regard to Mary Rogers, finding beyond a doubt that she was Mary Stover, and that her sister Anne had been a nurse in —— Street Hospital nineteen years before, and that it was by their mother, then living in Dorset Street, that the child was taken when it left the hospital. There could be no doubt, and as Edith was far too weak and too much overcome to undertake the journey home immediately, the colonel decided to remain a week or two in London, and wrote at once to Glenthorpe, asking Robert to bring Emma to them, but reserving the secret of Gertie’s birth until they came. Then he wrote to Gertie herself, but thought it better not to confide the whole to her until he saw her face to face. So he merely said that being in London he had thought it well to make some inquiries at the —— Bank, and, if possible, discover something of her family.
“And dear Gertie,” he wrote, “you will be no less astonished and delighted than I was to find that beyond the shadow of a doubt you areour own daughter. I cannot tell you all on paper. I only assure you that it is true, and when we return I will explain it to you. Mrs. Schuyler is not very well, but I hope she will be able to return in the Cuba, which sails in two weeks. With love and a kiss for little Arthur, who, I trust, is well, I am,
“Your affectionate father,H. Schuyler.”
“Your affectionate father,H. Schuyler.”
“Your affectionate father,H. Schuyler.”
“Your affectionate father,H. Schuyler.”
This was his letter, which he read to Edith, who said: “But, Howard, you never told her how my heart is aching for her, or gave her my love or anything.”
“Never mind,” the colonel answered, good-naturedly. “You will have all your lifetime to tell her of your love.”
And so the letter which would tell Gertie so much, and yet so little, was sent, and two days after Robert Macpherson arrived in London, bringing with him Emma, the little lady of Glenthorpe, who was perfectly wild over her husband and her beautiful home among the Highlands, and insisted that her father should go there if only for a few days. “You must see what a good mistress I make, and what a high-bred lady I am to the people who just worship Robert, and I do believe like him all the more because his mother was one of them. I begin to believe in what are calledmésalliancesafter all.”
Now was the time to tell the story of anothermésalliance, and the colonel told it, while Robert and Emma listened breathlessly, and when thedenouementwas reached the latter exclaimed, joyfully:
“Oh, I am so glad, that it is Gertie. She is your cousin, Robert, your own cousin, and it is all just like a story. Oh, I amsoglad!”
She evidently did not think it so dreadful to be connected with the Lyles. She had seen the white-haired, sweet-faced old woman in Alnwick, and seen Jenny Nesbit, too, for Robert had taken her there to call, and she had fallen in love with the grandmother, and tried to pet Godfrey Schuyler, now a big boy in jacket and trousers, and had sickened and grown hot and cold by turns at the vulgarity of Mrs. Nesbit, and then in the splendor and éclat of her home at Glenthorpe had forgotten them all and remembered only that she was Robert’s wife, the great lady of the neighborhood and the happiest woman living. Gertie should come and live with her, she said, and marry a Scottish Lord; but Edith shook her head; Gertie was hers. She could not part with her, and her heart was full of an unutterable yearning to behold the young girl again, and hear her call her mother, and she could hardly wait for the day when theCuba sailed at last from the harbor of Liverpool, and she knew she was going home to Gertie.