CHAPTER LVII.IN NEW YORK.
Godfrey was very sick, and had been for some days, though it was not until the morning when the telegram was forwarded that his fever assumed the typhoid form and danger was apprehended. A message had been sent to his Aunt Rossiter when he first became ill, but she was in Washington with Miss Creighton, and as the landlady knew nothing of the Calverts, her only alternative was to telegraph to Schuyler Hill, when the matter became alarming and her boarder delirious. Oh, how he tossed and rolled and raved and talked, fancying himself on the sea, and twice throwing himself out of bed because that was the proper thing to do when the ship gave a great lurch as the waves broke over it. Then he was sea-sick and tried to vomit, and wore himself out in his efforts, and screamed to a fanciedBobin the upper berth, to know how he was coming through. Then he stormed atDanfor bringing him sea-water to drink, and when the ship began to pitch again he tried to stand upon his head, and then sprang back upon his feet to preserve his equilibrium, he said to the scandalized and horrified Mrs. Wilson, who fled from him in dismay as the worst-behaved sick man she had ever seen. Then as the vessel ceased to pitch he grew more quiet, and only rolled with the imaginary ship, and talked about “La Sœur,” and begged his landlady to bring her to him, and promised to stop rolling if she would.
Utterly at her wits’ end to know what he meant byLa Sœur, or what to do with him, Mrs. Wilson was waiting impatiently for some response to her telegram, when the bell rang and a little, white-faced girl stepped into the hall and announced herself as having come to take care of Mr. Schuyler.
“Youtake care of him?” Mrs. Wilson exclaimed, when she had recovered from her first astonishment and surprise. “Youtake care of him? It is impossible. Why, it needs a strong man to manage him; he is just awful; he’s got it in his head that he is sea-sick, and rolls and pitches with the boat, and calls to Bob in the upper berth, and insists upon my bringing himla surr, whatever that may be——”
“Yes, that’ssister, that’s French,—that’s I,” Gertie said. “I am his sister, and have come to nurse him. His father is in Europe, his eldest sister Julia is in Florida, the next one is in Scotland, and so there was no one to come but me. Will you take me to him, please?”
After this explanation there was no demurring on Mrs. Wilson’s part. If that young girl was his sister she had a right to nurse her brother, and she led the way to the third floor, where in the room looking into the area Godfrey was still rolling with the ship, and occasionally mimicking and calling to somecatsfighting on the fence in the yard below. These cats had been the bane of Godfrey’s life even before he was sick. Regularly every night they came, sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes half a dozen, and made the neighborhood hideous with their music.
Godfrey had thrown his boot-jack at them, and his poker and soap-dish and bits of coal, and when all these failed he had tried the effect of fire-crackers and frightened the people opposite, who thought him a madman trying to fire the house! And still the cats fought on, and since Godfrey’s illness they had been terrible, and he was up on his elbow “sca-ating” to them, when the door opened and Gertie was ushered in. He knew her, and forgetting the cats and the ship, and Bob in the upper berth, he hailed her advent with a cry of joy.
“La Sœur, La Sœur,” he cried, “you’ve come,—you’ve come at last, and now you’ll stop that infernal noise and make the ship stand still. I’m pounded nearly to a jelly with all this rolling and pitching.”
He held his arms toward her, and she went to him and laid her cool hands on his burning brow, and pushed back his tangled curls, but did not kiss him. She could not bring herself to do that, even if she were his sister, but she held his hot handsin hers and tried to soothe and quiet him, and told him she would kill the cats and make the ship stand still, and talked to him till he grew quiet and fell away to sleep.
When the doctor came, he was told that Mr. Schuyler’s sister was there, and Gertie blushed and felt herself a guilty thing when he addressed her as Miss Schuyler, and gave directions about the medicines she was to give, and asked if there was no older person to come in her place.
“None but the housekeeper, and Godfrey prefers me,” she said, while Godfrey, who was listening, chimed in:
“That’s so. I’d rather have Gertie than the whole world besides. She’s a trump,—she’s a brick,—she’s a——”
“Hush, Godfrey, if you want me to stay you must not talk,” Gertie said, laying her hand upon his lips.
He kissed it, of course, and when she snatched it away, told her to put it back again if she did not want him to roll out of bed with the ship, which was lurching awfully! And she put it back and held it there so tight that he could neither kiss it nor speak, nor scarcely breathe.
“Godfrey,” she said a little sternly, when the doctor had gone out, “if you do not behave and stop talking and trying to kiss me, and if you attempt to roll out of bed, or get up, no matter how much the ship rocks, I will not stay with you a moment, but go home in the next train.”
This had the desired effect and brought forth earnest protestations of intended good behavior from Godfrey, who promised not to move but “to stand to his guns,” even if the ship should turn a complete somersault, which he guessed it would, judging from the way it was reeling and tossing now.
After that he was comparatively quiet, or if he became very restless and showed a disposition to repeat his tumbling exploits when the sea was badly in his head, a word from Gertie controlled him and kept him on his pillow. But his fever ran higher and higher every day, and his pulse beat faster and faster as the imaginary ship went plunging, through the waves which threatened to engulf it.
Gertie had told him she was his sister, that his father hadwritten so from London, and once when he seemed something like himself she read the letter to him, but he repelled the idea with scorn. She wasnothis sister. He did not want any more sisters. She was Gertie,—his Gertie,—his in spite of everybody, he said, and he seemed to know just when she was with him, even if he did not see her, and when she left the room he would moan and rave and talk until she came back, and by a touch of her hand or a single word made him quiet again.
And so the days went on, and the fever increased, and the vessel rocked worse and worse, and Godfrey’s brain grew more and more affected, and Gertie’s heart was very sore with the fear that he would die. “Brother” she called him now when she spoke to him, and he was no longer furious as he had been at that name coming from her lips. He did not seem to know what she said, only that she was with him,—that it was her hand which gave the medicine he would take from no one else,—her hand which bathed his temples and kept him firmly in his place when the sea was doing its worst,—her hand which rescued his poor, aching head from the stewardess, who was boiling water in it to make him some beef-tea. Oh, what dreadful fancies he had,—fancies which were wearing him out so fast, and which nobody could manage but Gertie. And her strength was giving way, and the roses were fading from her cheek, when one morning, about ten days after her arrival in New York, a servant knocked at the door and ushered in Miss Rossiter.
She had returned from Washington the night before, and, finding the note which had been sent to her when Godfrey became so ill, had come immediately after breakfast to see how he was. With a feeling that it would not be proper for her to go into his sick-room, Alice, who was stopping up town, remained at home, bidding Miss Rossiter give her love to Godfrey, and tell him she would come if he wished to see her.
Mrs. Wilson was out marketing when Miss Rossiter came, and whatever information that lady received concerning her nephew, she had from the servant who escorted her to his room.
“His sister with him! I did not know she had returned,”she said, in some surprise, when in reply to the question, “Who takes care of him?” the servant said:
“His sister, ma’am. She has been here more than a week.”
Miss Rossiter had spent a day in Hampstead the previous summer, and seen Gertie; but she had no thought of her now, and was utterly astonished and confounded, as she entered the room, to find Gertie Westbrooke sitting by Godfrey, who was sleeping from the effects of a powerful opiate which the doctor had administered an hour or so before.
At the sound of the opening door she looked up and gave a warning “Sh-hh!” as Miss Rossiter exclaimed, loudly:
“Gertie,—Gertie Westbrooke! Why areyouhere calling yourself hissister? Are you not ashamed? What does it mean? Tell me before I venture to stop a moment in the same room with you!”
And the highly indignant and rigidly virtuous spinster held back her clothes lest they should come in contact with the garments of the young girl, thus outraging every rule of propriety if not of decency.
Alice, who had been and in some sense still considered herself his affianced wife, would not so much as come to the house unless it was necessary, while evenshe, a matron of fifty and more, had some doubts about going herself into the room; and lo, here was the young girl,—this stranger,—sitting by him with the utmost familiarity, and bidding her be quiet and speak lower lest the sick man should awaken.
Miss Rossiter was greatly shocked, and, as her first question was not answered except by a look of innocent wonder, she repeated it angrily:
“Why are you here, passing for his sister? Don’t you know your good name will be ruined forever?”
Only an hour before the doctor had said to Gertie:
“There is but one chance in a hundred for your brother. If he can be made to sleep and be kept quiet, he may recover, but if the paroxysms and his fancy about the ship return he will die. Do your best for him.”
In dumb despair Gertie listened to him with such pain in her heart as sisters never feel.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, and her white lips quivered, but she did not cry as she took her seat by Godfrey to watch him while he slept, and thought what life would be to her without him. “Godfrey dead, Godfrey dead,” she whispered, softly. “I should want to die, too. Oh, Godfrey, you are more than my brother, more than my brother.”
It was just as she said this that Miss Rossiter came in, and the sick man stirred upon his pillow as if about to waken. He must not wake. It was death to do so, and Gertie bent protectingly over him as a mother bends over her restless child, and until it was twice repeated she did not answer the astonished woman’s question, “Why are you here, and why call yourself his sister?”
Then she turned, and fixing her blue eyes steadily on the lady, she said, in a low whisper:
“Col. Schuyler is in Europe; there was no one else to come, and Iamhis sister; read that.”
She had the colonel’s letter in her pocket, where she kept it constantly, and she passed it to Miss Rossiter, who read it rapidly, and then, more surprised and bewildered than she had ever been in her life, began to question Gertie, who, of course, could offer no explanation.
“The thing is simply impossible. Colonel Schuyler was not in Europe nineteen years ago,” Miss Rossiter said, after a little mental calculation.
“Mother might have been in America,” was Gertie’s response, quietly and sadly spoken, and then Miss Rossiter began again to question her as to what she herself knew of her antecedents, or what she had heard from Mary Rogers.
The murmur of voices disturbed Godfrey, who moaned about the ship which would not be still. Then Gertie said to her companion:
“Miss Rossiter, youmust nottalk. If Godfrey gets well he must sleep; the doctor said so. He has fancied himself in a ship at sea, and endured all the agonies of sea-sickness. I havesucceeded in making him believe he was on the land, but if the ship gets back into his head, he will die.”
She spoke decidedly, like one who had a right, and the proud woman bit her lip with vexation, but obeyed the girl who had so suddenly come before her in a new phase of character. She could not credit the story she had heard, and yet there it was in the colonel’s handwriting, “You are our daughter.” Evenshenever thought of Edith as connected with it, and in her own mind she ran over the name of every lady of her acquaintance who could by any possibility be implicated in the affair. But all in vain. She could find no clue to the mystery, and was obliged to give it up and wait for further developments when the colonel returned. Though she did not fully believe the story she felt more kindly toward Gertie, and when at last Godfrey awoke and was in the ship again, and insisted thatLa Sœurshould sit behind him and hold his head on her bosom to keep it from bumping against the side of the berth, she bade Gertie sit there, and offered no remonstrance when the pale face bent so low over the flushed, feverish one that the girl’s bright hair mingled with the brown curls of the sick man who called her “La petite capitaine,” and said she was steering him through the waves like an old salt!
Miss Rossiter could not go home while matters were in this state, and she wrote a note to Alice, asking that a dressing-gown might be sent to her with a few other articles necessary for the sick-room. Alice brought them herself, and sat in the parlor and cried when Miss Rossiter told her of Godfrey, and opened her eyes with wonder when told of Gertie and the relation she bore to Colonel Schuyler, if his word could be trusted. Alice believed it, and it lifted a load from her mind. If Gertie was Godfrey’s sister, then she ceased to be a rival, and in the first revulsion of feeling Alice felt very kindly toward Gertie, and expressed so strong a desire to see her that, at Miss Rossiter’s request, Gertie went down to the little lady, who received her rather gushingly. Alice forgave easily, and when she saw Gertie so pale and worn, and knew that it came from watching by Godfrey when there was no one else to care forhim, she forgot her old animosity entirely, and kissing her twice told her what a good girl she was to stay with Godfrey when he was so sick, and the fever catching, perhaps.
“And you are his sister, too?” she continued. “It is very strange, but I am so glad, and everything will turn out well if Godfrey only lives. Do you think he will?”
Gertie could not tell. He was very sick, she said, and she seemed so anxious to return to him that Alice arose to go. Standing a moment irresolutely and looking at Gertie she said:
“You are a nice little girl, and always were, and when Godfrey can understand, will you tell him I have been here, and that I am so sorry, and—and——”
She could not quite say what she wanted to, but Gertie knew what she meant, and answered her:
“I’ll tell him, and do all I can for you. I think it will come right now.”
She said it sadly, with a pang of regret for the condition of things which might result in healing the difference between Godfrey and Alice, and her heart was very heavy as she went back to her patient, who was conducting himself outrageously. They were in a regular north-easter, he said, and the ship was bottom side up, and he was bottom side up with it, and to the horror of his aunt had rolled himself and the bed-clothes out upon the floor, where he lay calling forLa capitaineto come and right the ship! With the help of her man-servant, who had accompanied Alice, and who was to stay as long as he was needed, Miss Rossiter got her nephew back to bed, and when Gertie came in he was panting with exhaustion, and evidently bracing himself against another lurch.
“Don’t desert,” he whispered to Gertie. “We had a tremendous swell while you were away, and things generally got topsy-turvy.”
Thatswellwas the last. He never attempted to roll again, but sank gradually into a state of unconsciousness more alarming than the lurches of the imaginary ship had been. The vessel was quiet now, wrecked, and going down so fast, it seemed to the heart-broken girl who watched beside poor Godfrey dayand night with a look of anguish on her face which touched Miss Rossiter, and awoke within her a feeling of interest for the heart-sore creature, whose pain she in a measure understood.
At last the colonel came. He had gone straight to Hampstead within an hour after landing in New York, and hearing from Mrs. Tiffe of his son’s illness, and that a telegram to the effect that he was worse had been received that afternoon, he had taken the night train back to the city, leaving Edith at Schuyler Hill, as she was not able to accompany him. Thus it was near midnight when he reached Mrs. Wilson’s boarding-house, and asked eagerly for his son.
“Very bad,—dying we fear,” was the report, and he sped swiftly up the stairs, stumbling in the upper landing over a little figure which sat crying on the floor.
It was Alice who had come down that afternoon to inquire for Godfrey, and on learning of his condition had refused to go home, and lingered outside the door of the room she would not enter lest she should be guilty of an indiscretion, or, perhaps, contract the fever.
Poor Godfrey, how white and ghastly and quiet he was now, as with his eyes shut he lay with his head pillowed on Gertie’s arm, and one of his hands holding to her dress as if afraid of losing her.
Gertie had sat thus for more than an hour gazing upon the pale face she held, her eyes heavy with unshed tears, for she could not cry any more. Her heart ached too hard for that. Godfrey was dying,—herGodfrey,—he said he was the last time he spoke to her, and he had called her his little Gertie, and kissed her hand and bade her stay with him on the ship which was sailing in smooth waters now and was almost at the shore. And he was hers,—her brother, perhaps, but still hers more than anybody else’s in all the wide, wide world.
Alice had sent a message to her: “Kiss him once for me!” but Gertie would not do it. She might, perhaps, kiss a dead Godfrey, but Godfrey living must know when she kissed him, and why, and so she only held his head and wiped the sweatfrom his brow, and let her own face fall over and touch his for a minute, while she whispered in his ear and asked if he still heard her and knew she was with him.
And it was thus she sat when the colonel came, and going up to his son called him by his name. But there was no response, no sign, and the physician who stood waiting, said:
“He heeds no one but his sister. Speak to him, Miss Schuyler. See if he knows you now.”
Then, over the whiteness of Gertie’s face, there came a flush at hearing herself called Miss Schuyler in the presence of the colonel, but she put her lips close to Godfrey’s ear, and said:
“Godfrey, do you know me yet?”
“Yes,myGertie, stick to the ship, we are about ready to land,” was the faint reply; and with a bitter cry, as if at the sight of the man who called himself her father every barrier had gone down, Gertie gave way, and winding both her arms round the form she held, sobbed passionately:
“Oh, Godfrey, my darling, if youcanhear me now, listen while I tell you how much I love you, for I do,—Ido, oh, Godfrey, oh, Colonel Schuyler,” and she lifted her white face piteously to him. “Forgive me, if I am wrong, I cannot,—cannotlove him as a brother.”
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and it was in vain that Godfrey whispered:
“Steady now,La petite capitaine, the boat is running into port.”