ON THE SEA.
They had been at sea three days, and Edith in her warm wraps and pretty
hood was sitting on deck in the large easy-chair her husband had bought
in Liverpool for this purpose. Every comfort which ingenuity could
devise and money pay for he had procured for her in order to make the
voyage bearable. One of the largest, most commodious staterooms was
hers, so that she need not feel too much confined, and when all this did
not avail to avert the evils of sea-sickness, he and Norah nursed her
assiduously, until she was able to be lifted in his arms and carried
upon deck, where, with the fresh breeze blowing in her face, she felt
her strength coming back, and thoroughly enjoyed the blue expanse of sky
above, and the deep, dark waters beneath, which now were smooth and
quiet as a river. The colonel was never sick, and walked the planks from
first to last as firmly and steadily as a general at the head of his
troops; but alas for poor Godfrey. During the voyage out he had been
perfectly well, even in a storm, and boasted much of his ability to keep
so.
“You have only to exercise your will and you are well enough,” he said,
with a certain sniff of contempt for the weaker ones who are never seen
from port to port. “Pluck is all you need to keep you straight, even
when chairs and tables and shovel and tongs are dancing a cotillon, and
raising Ned generally.”
This was Godfrey’s opinion, when in his clean, light summer suit he
stepped airily on board and gave his hand to Bob Macpherson, even then
growing pale about the lips and unsteady in his feet. But when they had
been out a few hours, and a great lurch came, and the waves broke over
the deck, and splashed Godfrey’s clean pants, and dashed the salt spray
in his face, he, too, began to turn white, and feel, as he expressed it,
as if the ends of his toes were coming up through his stomach to pay his
throat a visit, and when the toes reached there and showed signs of
going still further, the young man succumbed to his fate, and suddenly
disappearing from view, went headlong into the room where poor Bob had
lain from the first, caring little whether his perfumed hair was parted
in the middle or not, or his elaborate night-shirt buttoned before or
behind. Personal appearance was nothing in that stateroom where the two
young men lay, one in the upper, one in the under berth, and both too
sick for more exertion than to groan, when a swell, heavier than usual,
sent them rolling on the floor. Regularly each morning _Dan_ went in to
see how it fared with them, offering chicken-broth and coffee, and
bidding them “keep up their courage and have a little pluck; it was
nothing to what it would be.”
To these consolatory remarks Bob offered no response. He was too nearly
crushed to speak, and afraid, withal, to do so, as the least movement
raised a tornado in his stomach; but Godfrey was more demonstrative, and
having plunged into bed in his boots, which he had succeeded in getting
off and had beside him, he hurled one at the head of poor Dan, who
adroitly dodged it and then graciously adjusted the spittoon, knowing it
would be needed after such exertion. And it was!
“Talk to me of pluck!” Godfrey said, between the upheavings which nearly
burst his throat; “I believe my soul I’m throwing mine up!” and then he
lay back upon his pillow, white, quivering and subdued, and took a
swallow of the broth and declared it was made of dishwater, and bade Dan
clear out and never show himself there again.
Regularly, twice each day, the colonel visited his son, and made set
speeches to him, and bade him try to dress himself and get on deck,
where the air would soon restore him.
“Mrs. Schuyler is there, and nearly well, and she was as bad as you, and
worse, for she could not flounce as you do. A little effort of the will
is all that is necessary to set you on your legs.”
Unconsciously, he was quoting Godfrey’s own words, and poor Bob ventured
a little chuckle, which he paid for afterward, while Godfrey wished
there was no such commandment as the third, so that he might free his
mind for once.
And how, these days, had it fared with little Gertie, the second-class
passenger, whose stateroom was small and close and hot, for the window
had been closed and fastened since the water came in with a dash and wet
the little hard bed. Poor Gertie, how the ship tumbled and rolled and
tossed, and how she tossed and rolled and tumbled with it, and clutched
at everything in her reach, with a feeling that they were tipping over
and she was standing on her head. And how the cold, clammy sweat stood
on her face and hands, and the dreadful, death-like faintness crept from
her feet through every nerve, as, with fearful contortions, her stomach
tried in vain to relieve itself, and she fell back, panting and
helpless, upon the hard, scant pillow. It was horrible, and the poor
child wished so much that she could die, or that the ship would stop for
just one minute, and give her time to breathe, even though it were the
fetid air, which almost stifled her and made her long so for the
hedge-rows and fields of dear old England, now so far away. But Gertie
did not die, and the vessel did not stop, and the window was not opened.
She was merely second-class, and it was not worth one’s while to open
and shut windows just for her; and though Mary Rogers did all she could
for her sick child, and brought her many things to tempt her appetite,
Gertie turned from them all, and sobbed piteously, “I am so sick,—shall
we ever get there? Is everybody sick, and are all the rooms as close and
hot and small? Where is the pretty lady, Mrs. Schuyler? I wish she’d
come and see me. I think I should be better. Would you dare ask her?”
Mrs. Rogers did not know whether she dared or not. She would see, she
said, and when that afternoon she saw Edith on deck, she ventured upon
some trivial remark as the cousin of Norah, and finally spoke of her
little girl, who was suffering so much.
“Oh yes; Gertie Westbrooke. I remember now. She was to go with us; and
you are Mrs. Rogers, Norah’s cousin, and the little girl is very sick
and uncomfortable; I am so sorry for her. I know just how it feels. Can
I do anything for her?”
Mary hesitated and then said:
“She has felt interested in you since the day you were married. She was
there.”
“Yes, and threw me the pretty bouquet,” Edith said; and Mary continued:
“She talks a great deal of you, and thinks now if you could come and see
her it would do her good; but, ma’am, I told her how it wasn’t likely
you would or could do that. Our room is very small and close, and the
pillows are so hard and poor.”
“I do not believe I can go now; I am hardly strong enough,” Edith said;
“but I will come some day if she does not get well; and now carry her
this soft shawl; it will answer for a pillow. I do not need it at all,
and Norah shall take her some oranges and wine.”
Mary demurred at the shawl, but Edith insisted, and remembered the
oranges and wine, which so refreshed the child that she slept soundly
that night with Edith’s shawl for a pillow, and a dream of Edith in her
heart.
The next day she was better, and Mary took the shawl back to Edith, who
was again on deck, with her husband standing beside her.
“Poor thing,” Edith said, kindly; “I am glad she is better. Tell her
I’ll come and see her when I can, and as soon as she is able to be moved
I’ll have her brought up to my stateroom for a while; it must be
dreadful there with the windows shut and the air so close and confined.”
She glanced at her husband, whose face was overcast.
“Who is this woman and who is the child you propose moving into our
stateroom?” he asked, stiffly, when Mary was gone; and Edith replied by
telling him what she knew of Gertie Westbrooke and her mother.
Colonel Schuyler could reproach Edith for seeming cold and proud toward
the Lyles, to whom he felt that he owed something, but he was far from
wishing her to treat people like Mary Rogers with any show of
familiarity. There his pride came in strongly, and he said to her at
once:
“You can send the child any delicacy you choose, and I will see that her
window is opened so she can have air, but she must not be brought to our
stateroom; and if she slept on your shawl, as it seems she did, I desire
you to give it to her altogether. You surely will never wear it again.
Norah?” And he turned to their maid, who stood near:
“Take this shawl to your cousin’s child and tell her Mrs. Schuyler sent
it, and wishes her to keep it.”
Norah looked wonderingly at him, while Edith blushed painfully, but
neither said a word, and after Norah was gone with the shawl Colonel
Schuyler continued: “I do not wish to distress you, my dear, or to
interfere with your actions unnecessarily, but I think it just as well
not to have too much to do with the lower class unless, as in the case
of the Lyles, we are under obligations to them. And as this Rogers child
is nothing to us, you are not called upon to visit her. She will soon
recover. Such people always do. I’ll go now and speak about the window.”
He felt uncomfortable and wished to get away, for he did not quite like
the grieved look in Edith’s eyes, or the pained expression of her face.
Edith herself could not tell why his words hurt her as they did, or why
she felt so interested in the sick girl whom she had as yet never seen
distinctly. But she was interested in her, and though she did not visit
her as she had intended doing, she sent her many delicacies and a pillow
from her stateroom, and felt almost as much pleased as Mary Rogers
herself when she heard at last that she was better.
Gertie had been very sick, and her bright color was all gone, and her
round cheeks looked thin and wan, when at last Mary dressed her in her
warm wrapper, with its facings of pink, and then folding Edith’s shawl
about her carried her on deck, and propping her up with pillows and
cushions made her as comfortable as she could.
Though pale and worn with marks of suffering on her face and in her soft
blue eyes, Gertie was pretty still, and made a very attractive picture
as she sat in her quiet corner with a book, whose pages she was turning
listlessly, when she heard footsteps approaching her, and a voice
exclaimed:
“Hallo, Bob, by George, if there isn’t ‘_La Sœur_,’ looking like a
little ghost; here, this way;” and Godfrey Schuyler, who was also better
and able to be up, came quickly to her side, followed by Robert
Macpherson, who moved more slowly and showed more signs of weakness than
the active, restless Godfrey.
Robert Macpherson had seen and talked with Gertie at her lodgings near
Oakwood, and had asked her to sit for her picture, and she had said she
would, and a day had been appointed for the sitting, when Mary Rogers
interfered and refused _in toto_, and kept her child so close that
neither Robert nor Godfrey saw her again except in her aunt’s company or
through the window of her room.
Godfrey, indeed, had only spoken to her once, and that when she sat in
the door eating blackberries, her lips and pretty fingers stained with
the juice, and her bright hair falling about her face. Mrs. Rogers had
come upon him then just as he was going to make some flattering speech,
and called her little girl away, and he had not seen her since until
now, when he esteemed it a great piece of luck to stumble thus upon her
with the dragon out of sight. Gertie knew him, and a pleased smile broke
over her face and shone in her eyes, when he stopped before her and
asked if she had been sick and how she liked the feeling of it. She did
not like it at all, and she and Godfrey grew very social and sympathetic
as they compared notes, he going far ahead of her, of course, inasmuch
as he did not hesitate to draw upon his imagination when necessary,
while she adhered strictly to the truth, saying only that she felt at
times as if she were standing on her head, while he averred that he did
stand on his head until he was black in the face. She did not believe
him, but she laughed merrily at his droll sayings, and then acquaintance
was progressing rapidly when he asked what she was reading, and stooped
down beside her to see the title-page.
Godfrey was very fond of little girls, and this one had interested him
greatly from the time he first saw her in the cab on Caledonia Street,
and now as he bent his face so close to hers that his brown curls
touched her auburn hair, he could not resist the temptation, but
snatched a kiss from her lips ere she was aware of his intention. Though
small of stature Gertie was twelve years old, and very womanly in some
respects, and at this liberty all her instincts of modesty and propriety
awoke within her, and while the hot tears glittered in her eyes, which
flashed angrily upon the offender, she said:
“You stop! You mustn’t! You shan’t! You have no business to kiss me, Mr.
Godfrey, and I am very indignant!”
She wiped her lips two or three times, while Godfrey, who considered it
a good joke, and was vastly amused at her rage, said to her:
“Why oughtn’t I to kiss a pretty girl like you when I find her all
alone?”
“Because I am alone,” Gertie replied, with a very wise shake of the
head. “Because men like you shouldn’t kiss girls like me whom they don’t
like.”
“But I do like you immensely,” Godfrey said, “and think you the
prettiest girl I ever saw.”
“Hush!” Gertie rejoined, with all the dignity of a woman of twenty. “You
shall not talk to me like that, and you wouldn’t either if I was
somebody else.”
“Who, for instance?” Godfrey asked, and looking him steadily in the
face, with her clear, honest eyes, Gertie said:
“Mr. Godfrey, if I were one of your sisters would you have done it?”
“Certainly, I have a right to kiss my sister,” Godfrey said, and Gertie
continued:
“I don’t mean that. I mean if you were somebody else and I was one of
your sisters.”
“Still wrong,” Godfrey said, “for even if I were somebody else and you
my sister I would kiss you many times.”
He would not understand, and Gertie glanced appealingly at Robert
Macpherson, who had been listening languidly, while with an artist’s
interest he attentively studied the little face which so puzzled and
attracted him. As he met her glance he came a step nearer to her, and
said:
“Let me tell you how to put it. Suppose you are my sister?”
“You are a gentleman born?” Gertie asked, while the young man colored to
the roots of his hair, and answered:
“I believe I am.”
“Well, then,” and she turned again to Godfrey, “suppose I was his sister
and you were yourself, and you found me a sick, tired little girl,
sitting by myself, would you have dared to kiss me then?”
There was in her manner so much sweetness and dignity withal that
languid Bob roused in her behalf, and said:
“If he did I’d knock him down,” while Godfrey, wholly driven to bay,
answered humbly:
“No, Miss Gertie, I would not, and I beg your pardon, and assure you I
meant no harm, but really you looked so pretty, so _piquante_——”
“You must not tell me that either,” Gertie said. “I’m glad if you think
me pretty, and glad to have you like me, but you mustn’t tell me so.
It’s very bad, for Auntie Rogers says young men like you never talk to
girls like me for good, and I must not let you.”
“What kind of a girl are you, pray?” Godfrey asked, feeling more and
more amused and interested with this quaint little creature, who
replied:
“I am poor, and have not any relatives except a grandmother, and I don’t
know where she is. But my mother was a lady, auntie says, and I once
lived in a big house with servants, and auntie was my nurse. I don’t
know where it was or why I left it when mother died. Auntie does not
tell me, and she is so kind, and I have forty pounds a year of my own,
and maybe I shall learn a trade, or teach school in America, and some
time marry respectably, but I’m not the kind of girl for a man like you
to kiss and talk to.”
“Gertie, you are a brick!” came emphatically from the amused Godfrey,
who felt a great desire to kiss the full lips again in his admiration of
the child.
But he dared not do it. Indeed, there was something about her which
inspired him with a respect such as he had never before felt for a girl,
and as he told Robert Macpherson in confidence, he wanted to crawl into
his boots when, after his assertion that she was a brick, she lifted her
eyes so wonderingly, and said:
“I’m a what?”
“A brick,” he answered; “don’t you know what that is?”
“Yes, I know it in its place; but I don’t know what you mean when you
give the name to me. Nothing bad, I hope.”
“Certainly not; it’s a compliment. I called you so because I like you
and think you smart,—clever, you English would say, I suppose.”
And Godfrey began to shake down his pants, and stand first on one foot
and then upon the other, in his perplexity how to appear well in the
mind of this little girl, who was so young, and innocent, and honest,
and yet so old in some things.
“That’s slang, isn’t it?” Gertie asked.
And he replied:
“Yes, I suppose it would be called so, but it is very expressive. Don’t
you like slang?”
“No, I do not, and I don’t see why nice people like you should use it so
much.”
“Do I use it so much?” Godfrey asked.
And the girl replied:
“I heard you once at Oakwood, when you did not know I was there in the
kitchen, say ‘by George,’ and ‘by Jove,’ three times right along, and
you called your father the ‘governor,’ and one of the maids said she
supposed it was Yankee slang.”
Godfrey’s face was scarlet at this reproof, which he knew he merited,
and for a moment he did not know what to say. Soon rallying, however, he
said, good-naturedly:
“I guess I am rather given to slang,—the girls at home nag me about it
all the time, and I do it to tease them; but I’ll quit it now, by Jo—I
beg your pardon. I did not know I was so given to it, and I will reform,
by George! There! that was to finish up.”
And Godfrey laughed heartily at himself, while Gertie, too, joined in
the laugh, and thought how handsome he was, and what white, even teeth
he had, and hoped he was not angry with her. So when he said to her
next: “Gertie, if I really try to reform and quit my slang, will you
promise to like me a little?” she answered quickly: “Yes, and I like you
now,—some, you know,—though I did not like you to stare at me so when I
was in the cab at Mrs. Barrett’s gate; but when I saw you in church at
the wedding, I thought you very nice, and kept on thinking so until you
kissed me, when I was very angry; but I’m over it now, and you’ll never
kiss me again.”
That was a fixed fact in her mind, but Godfrey was not so sure of it,
and he said to her seriously:
“Gertie, I am sure you are very good and generous, and I really mean to
reform, and I want you to promise me one thing. You are going to
Hampstead, I believe?”
Yes, Gertie supposed she was, “but,” she added, “I shall not see you, of
course.”
“Why not?” he asked, and she replied:
“Why, don’t you know? You are rich and we are poor. You live in the
great house, and we are your tenants; that is, I believe auntie is to
rent a cottage of your father, if it is not too high. We cannot give
much, for auntie lost her shares in the bank last summer, and now she
must do fluting and clear-starching and sewing for our living, as she
will not touch my forty pounds; that she says is for my education, and I
do so want to learn music. We can live on most nothing, only the rent
takes money. Will it be very much?”
“No, not much,” Godfrey replied, a sudden thought flashing into his mind
upon which he resolved to act, but not till he had made his compact with
Gertie.
“You did not let me finish,” he said; “I want to make a bargain with
you, which is this: I am to reform, and you are to tell me from time to
time if I am improving, and when you really think I am a perfect
gentleman, you are to let me kiss you again. Is it a fair bargain?”
Gertie considered a moment, and then said, with the utmost gravity:
“Ye-es,—I don’t believe there would be any harm in it, inasmuch as you
did it for pay.”
“Then it is a bargain, and I begin from this minute to be a gentleman,”
Godfrey cried, but his zeal was a little dampened by Gertie’s next
remark.
“It may be a long time, Mr. Godfrey, and I’ll be grown up, and then it
would not be proper at all.”
Here Robert Macpherson burst into a loud laugh and exclaimed:
“Better give it up, Schuyler; the child is too much for you.”
But Godfrey was not inclined to give it up, and said:
“A bargain is a bargain, Miss Gertie, and I shall claim my reward if it
is not until you are a hundred. How old are you, little one?”
“Twelve going on thirteen. How old are you?”
“Eighteen, going on nineteen,” was Godfrey’s answer, and as he just then
saw his father in a distant part of the vessel, he touched his hat and
walked away to set in train the plan he had in his mind for benefiting
Gertie Westbrooke.
She interested him greatly, and he wished to do her good, and joining
his father, he said:
“By the way, father, have you decided which house you will rent to Mrs.
Rogers?”
“Rent to whom?” Colonel Schuyler asked. “Who is Mrs. Rogers?”
He had forgotten her for the moment, but when Godfrey explained that she
was Norah’s cousin, he remembered that something had been said about her
having one of his cottages, but he had not decided which one. Why, what
did it matter to Godfrey?
“It matters this,” Godfrey said. “You know my house, which you gave me
for my own. Perry wrote me a few days before we sailed that the tenant
had left it suddenly, and there was no one in it. Now, if you don’t
mind, I’d like to let it to Mrs. Rogers.”
“Certainly, let it to her if you like,” the colonel said, pleased to see
in his son what he thought a business proclivity, and a wish to make the
most of his property.
He little guessed that it was Godfrey’s interest in Gertie which
prompted him to wish to see her in his own cottage, the best by far of
all the houses known as the Schuyler tenements. It was not new like many
of them, but it was very commodious and pretty, with a wealth of vines
creeping over the porch, a rose tree near the door, from which Edith
herself had plucked the sweet blossoms, and twined them in her hair, for
Godfrey’s cottage was the very house where Mrs. Fordham once lived, and
from which Abelard Lyle was carried to the grave. And Gertie Westbrooke
was going there, and Godfrey was already thinking how, as soon as he
reached New York, he would telegraph to Perry to have the house cleaned
throughout and put in perfect repair for his new tenants.
Meantime Robert Macpherson was puzzling himself over Gertie’s face and
its resemblance to another.
“How can they be so like, and yet nothing to each other?” he said, and
once, when an opportunity occurred, he questioned the child closely with
regard to her antecedents, but elicited little more information than she
had already given Godfrey in his hearing.
“She was Gertie Westbrooke, born in London, January —, 18—. She had
lived for a while in a big house, with her mother, whom she could just
remember, and who died when she was two years old, and then a new mother
came, who was very cross, and Mary Rogers, her nurse, took her away, and
had been so good to her ever since.”
“And your father?” Robert asked. “Where is he? Do you never see him?”
“He was cross, too, and drank too much wine,” Gertie said; “and auntie
says he’s dead, and I guess I hain’t any relatives now, but a
grandmother, and I don’t know where she is. I heard auntie tell a woman
once that I had a history stranger than a story-book, but when I asked
her about it she looked cross, and bade me never listen, and said if
there was anything I ought to know, she would surely tell me. Sometimes
when I see grand people, I think, maybe, I am one of them, for I feel
just as they act, and could act just like them, if I tried.”
“Maybe you are a princess in disguise,” Robert said, laying his hand
kindly on the bright flowing hair. “Gertie, do you know you are the very
image of the only sister I ever had? Dorothea was the name, but I called
her Dora, and loved her so much.”
“And she died?” Gertie said, guessing the fact from the tremor in the
young man’s voice and the moisture in his eyes.
“Yes, she died, and I have no picture of her, and that is why I wanted
you to sit for me. You are so much like her. Maybe if you tell your aunt
the reason she will allow it when we reach America. I am going to
Hampstead, too, for a time, to visit Mr. Godfrey. Will you speak to her
about it?”
Gertie promised that she would, and kept her word, and Mrs. Rogers said
she would see, which Gertie took as an affirmative reply and reported to
the young man, telling him, too, that auntie had forbidden her to talk
much with him, and telling Godfrey that he must not come where she was,
for auntie did not like it, and said it was “no good.”
“And I didn’t tell her, either, that you kissed me; if I had, she would
have been angry, and maybe shut me up in that close, dark stateroom; but
you are never to do it again.”
“No, not till you say you think me a perfect gentleman; then I shall
claim my reward,” Godfrey said, laughingly, and as Mary Rogers appeared
in view, with the look of a termagant on her face, he turned his back on
Gertie and pretended to be very intent upon a sail just appearing in the
distant horizon.