THE NEW LIFE AT THE HILL.
It was just one year from the day when Edith came to Hampstead, and over
the house upon the Hill a dark cloud was hanging, as hour after hour
went by, and there seemed to be no hope for the pale-faced woman lying
at the very gates of death, and talking in her delirium of things which
no one understood. She had been thus ever since the birth of the infant
boy, at which the colonel scarcely looked, so intense was his anxiety
for the young mother, who, whenever he came near her with words of
tenderness, motioned him away, saying:
“No, no, you mustn’t, you don’t know. It is not the first, as you think.
Oh, my baby, I don’t know where she is; find her, Howard; find my baby
for me.”
He brought her the little mite of flesh and blood wrapped in soft
cambric and flannel, and said:
“Look, Edith, here is our boy; shall I lay it beside you?” Very
wistfully the gray eyes glanced for a moment into the colonel’s face and
then down upon the child, while a look of anguish crept into them as
Edith cried:
“No, no, this is not the one. I want my lost baby, with the blue eyes.
Will no one find it for me?”
Then in a curious way she would examine her surroundings and whisper to
herself:
“Handsome furniture, fine linen, silken curtains, and silver dishes to
eat from. This is not the place. Mother, mother, where am I, and are you
there by the fire with baby?”
She was back again in London in the forlorn room in Dorset street, and
the rain was splashing against the windows just as it did that dreary
day, and she heard the footsteps of the lodgers on the stairs and the
roar of the great city, and fought again the battle for her child, and
the iron hand came back and clutched her throat and strangled her until
her face was purple and she writhed in the agonies of suffocation. Then,
when the paroxysm was over she lay for hours in a swoon so nearly
resembling death, that at last they thought her gone and the whisper
that she was dead ran through the hall, down to the servants’ quarters,
where it was told to Gertie Westbrooke, who had come to inquire for her.
“No, no, not dead; oh, what shall I do?” Gertie cried, as with a low
moan she sank down upon the grass by the door, and covering her face
with her hands wept passionately.
During the past year Edith and Gertie had met often by the grave which
the child tended with so much care, and they had learned to know each
other well. Together they had talked of French and music and the books
which Gertie liked best and the flowers of which Gertie knew so much;
and Edith had written to the white-haired old lady among the heather
hills, and sent the roses Gertie had pressed. And when the answer came
which had in it a blessing for “the bonny lassie who looks after my puir
laddie’s grave,” Edith read it to Gertie as they sat under the shadow of
the whispering pine which grew above the grave. And now all this had
come to an end, and all the brightness of Gertie’s life seemed stricken
out with the words:
“Mrs. Schuyler is dead.”
“And she so lovely and good,—and she liked me, too. Oh, I cannot bear
it,—I cannot!” Gertie sobbed, just as a footstep came near.
Looking up, she saw Emma, who, overhearing the words, and guessing at
their meaning, said to her:
“Gertie, she is not dead. She has revived a little and is breathing
still, though the doctor thinks her dying.”
“Not dead? Then there is hope! Oh, Miss Emma, may I just look at her?
I’ll be so very quiet, and I loved her so much!”
“Yes. I do not know as you can do any harm by looking at her,” Emma
said, and in an instant Gertie was flying up the stairs and along the
south hall which led to Edith’s room.
The door was open, and looking in, she saw the white face upon the
pillow, framed in masses of golden-brown hair, which the fair hands had
torn and matted when the iron fingers were at the throat. She seemed to
be dead, and the doctor touched her pulse to see if it still beat, when
the lips said faintly:
“Where’s my little girl?”
The last word was prolonged, and to the excited child it sounded like
“little Gertie,” and, without stopping to consider the consequences,
Gertie darted across the floor to the side of the sick woman, whose lips
she kissed, as she said:
“I’m here! I’m here!”
“Go away!” came sternly from the wretched husband, who frowned darkly
upon the girl thus audaciously disturbing his dying wife.
And with a frightened face Gertie started to obey him, when the
physician interposed and stopped her, saying:
“Speak to her again.”
His practised eye had detected a change in his patient when Gertie first
spoke to her, and now, when at his command the silvery voice, so full of
love and tender pathos, said, “I am here,—little Gertie. Do you know me,
Mrs. Schuyler?” there certainly was a change, but whether from the
effect of the powerful medicine given a few moments before as a last
experiment, or because of that voice, which rang so clear and birdlike,
I cannot tell. I only know something penetrated into the deep darkness,
and brought back the senses almost gone forever. There was a fluttering
of the eyelids; then they unclosed, and the eyes looked full at Gertie,
while the lips whispered, “Stay!” and a hand moved slowly toward the
child, who grasped it in her own, and held it fast, while Edith slept
for a few moments.
“She is better,—she will live,” the doctor said, as he met her look of
recognition when her sleep was over. “Quiet now is what she needs.”
And then Gertie started to leave the room, but the white fingers closed
tightly round hers, and seeing that, Colonel Schuyler bade her stay.
So Gertie stayed that afternoon, and sat by Edith’s side, and smoothed
the tangled hair and bathed the pale forehead, and held the cooling
drink to the parched lips; and once when the baby cried in the next room
she went and took it up, and, soothing it into quiet, laid it back upon
its dainty bed.
Gertie was a natural nurse, and she covered herself with so much glory
that day at Schuyler Hill that the colonel himself unbent to her, and
sent her home in his carriage because of a rain which was falling, and
asked her to come again.
And Gertie went often during the weeks of Edith’s illness, and the sick
woman felt better and happier when Gertie was in the room beside her,
where she could look at her and touch her if she chose. There had been
consciousness for half an hour or more after the birth of her child, but
instead of joy that “a man was born into the world,” there had swept
over her a wave of bitter anguish as she remembered the home in Dorset
Street, and the other little one, of whom Colonel Schuyler never heard,
and whose father slept under the evergreen which she could see from her
window nodding in the autumn wind, and bending toward her as it seemed
in an attitude of menace.
They had brought her baby for her to see, but the touch of its hand on
her cheek had awakened such intense love, and remorse, and pity and
longing for the other child dead so long ago, that she had writhed in
agony and pushed her boy away, while her wandering mind went far, far
down into the deepest depths of darkness as she reviewed a page of her
life which she had thought sealed forever. How awful were the hours of
those days when the pine tree nodded and grinned and laughed and threw
its long arms at her, and Abelard came and stood beside her with sad,
reproachful eyes.
Oh, it was horrible, and from this horror Gertie’s voice had called her
back, and she clung to the young girl, and insisted upon having her with
her as much as possible, and said to herself:
“It’s because of her care for that grave that I love her so much;” and
when one day during her convalescence Gertie came to her and told her of
Miss Armstrong’s sudden illness, and that the school was closed
indefinitely, and asked what she should do for a teacher, Edith
considered for a moment, and then said:
“Go, please, to Colonel Schuyler’s room, and ask him to come here, and
you wait in the hall till you see him go out.”
“What is it, darling? Can I do anything for you?” the colonel asked, as
he bent over his wife.
“Yes, Howard,” and Edith’s white fingers strayed caressingly over his
hair and forehead. “You know that,—that both of us feel as if I were
indebted to Gertie Westbrooke for my life, and I wish to do her a favor.
Will you say yes to it?”
“Certainly—certainly. Is it money?” the colonel asked, and Edith
replied:
“No. Miss Armstrong’s school is broken up, and Gertie has no teacher.
She is a fine scholar, I hear, and anxious to learn. Let her come here
every day and recite to Miss Browning. Miss Alice has nearly finished
her education, and will soon be gone. Shall it be so? May I tell her to
come?”
There was a momentary hesitation on the colonel’s part and then he
answered:
“Yes, certainly, yes, let her come. You always had a _penchant_ for this
girl, and I must say she seems a very remarkable child.”
And so it was settled that Gertie was henceforth to recite to Miss
Browning, and though there was much opposition in the school-room, the
colonel stood firmly to his decision, and one pleasant morning in
October Gertie brought her books to Schuyler Hill and took the desk
assigned her, far removed from her aristocratic companions, who at first
scarcely noticed her by so much as a nod of recognition.
But as time went on her sweet temper and quiet, gentle demeanor
insensibly won upon them, while they were surprised at her scholarship,
so superior in some respects to their own that even Alice stooped more
than once to ask information from her. Whatever Gertie undertook she did
thoroughly, but her great success as a scholar was owing in part to the
interest Robert Macpherson had evinced in her studies ever since he
became an occupant of the cottage. He was away now on the Western
prairies sketching the scenery there, and so Gertie was thrown upon her
own resources; but she was equal to the emergency, and studied early and
late to overtake and surpass, if possible, the young ladies who looked
upon her so contemptuously. But for any coldness on their part she more
than had amends in the extreme kindness with which Edith invariably
treated her; while the baby, who was called James for the colonel’s
father, was a constant source of delight.
Jamie was a beautiful child, with a mass of dark brown curls, and eyes
like his father’s; and even Julia, who had from the first been opposed
to his birth, and treated her step-mother with great coolness on account
of it, softened toward him, and wrote to Miss Rossiter, who was now in
New York, that “he really was a fine child, and that all things
considered, she was quite reconciled to his birth, though she felt for
Godfrey, who was no longer the only son.”
The baby was a success, and no one seemed to love it more than Gertie
Westbrooke. She was passionately fond of children, and devoted herself
so much to Jamie that he soon learned to know her, and would cry when
she left his sight. And so it came about that she was much with Edith,
who each day grew more and more interested in her, and more resolved to
care for and befriend her in every possible way.