WAITING.
Gertie had been very restless the entire day, and when at last the sun
went down, and there wanted but a few hours of the time when Godfrey was
to return, her cheeks were burning with fever, and she was far more fit
for bed than for the summer-house, where the fog from the river was
making itself felt, and the night damp was falling. But I could not
persuade her. Godfrey had said: “Wait for me here when the moon comes
over the hills,” and she would do it if a hundred fevers had been
burning in her veins. She had no hope, she said, that Colonel Schuyler
would relent, and if he did not she must keep her vow, though her heart
broke in doing it. Still I think there was a shadowy hope, which buoyed
her up during the first half hour of waiting. She had expected him to be
with her before the moon came over the hill, and when the first silvery
light fell on the opposite shore, and the woods began to grow less dark
and sombre, she grew restless and nervous, and complained of being cold,
while the bright flush faded from her cheeks and lips, and left them
pale as marble. The whole river now was flecked with patches of
moonlight, and the summer-house, with the shrubbery around it, began to
stand out in shadows, as the moon crept higher and higher up the eastern
horizon. And still he did not come, and Gertie’s teeth were chattering
and her hair was wet with dew, and I was about to insist upon her going
in, when through the stillness a footstep sounded,—a rapid, elastic
footstep,—and we heard next a merry whistle on the road not far away.
Godfrey was coming; he had been successful, or he would never have come
so blithely. So Gertie thought,—so I believed, and I stole away to the
house, leaving the lovers alone in their interview, which lasted more
than an hour, and at its close left the two young hearts which loved
each other so fondly, sore and full of pain. For Gertie would not break
her word so solemnly pledged.
“I love you so much,” she said, when he had exhausted every argument in
his power to win her to his opinion, “and I would so gladly be poor with
you, and work so hard for you if I could do it without sin; but I
cannot; I promised I would not marry you without your father’s consent,
and I must keep my word. But I did not promise not to love you, and I
can do that and will, forever and ever. And now good-by. Don’t go to the
house with me. Don’t kiss me,” she cried, as he made a motion to clasp
her in his arms. “You must not do that; and, Godfrey, you say you shall
leave Hampstead to-morrow. Don’t part from your father in anger. Don’t
for my sake; and, Godfrey—” her voice shook a little here—“and-and—try
to love Alice,—do,—and be happy with her,—and—never mind about me.”
She broke from him then, and came rapidly to the house where I received
her, and removing the shawls, wet with the heavy dew, rubbed and chafed
her cold hands and feet and got her to bed as soon as I could, while in
my heart was a dire foreboding of what might follow this excitement and
long exposure to the night air, in her already weakened condition. Nor
were my forebodings groundless, and Godfrey did not leave home the
following day as he meant to do. With his travelling bag and shawl he
came past our house on his way to the train and stopped at the door a
moment to ask for Gertie, but when I led him to her room where she lay
burning with fever and talking of him and his father, and the little hot
berth in the steamer where she had been so sick; he put his satchel and
shawl in the corner, and drawing his chair near her bedside sat there
all day long, while the doctor came in and out and said it was the
result of exposure that day on the river, and that with ordinary care he
apprehended no danger. Edith, too, came down with Emma, whom I hardly
knew with the new happiness shining in her face and making her so sweet
and gentle. Both were very anxious about Gertie, and the latter remained
all night, and watched with Godfrey, by the sick girl, who paid no heed
to either of them, but kept asking for Col. Schuyler. And the next day
he came and stood by her, and taking her hot hands in his asked her what
she wanted.
She seemed to know him, and replied:
“To tell you that I have not told a lie. I’ve kept my promise, though it
broke my heart to do it, but I could not tell a lie even for the love I
have for Godfrey.”
I do not know what he said to her, but he was very pale when he came
from the sick-room, and he spoke pleasantly to Godfrey, and made no
objections to his being there. But he did not come again or see his son,
who stayed until Gertie was out of danger. Then he asked to see her for
just one moment, but what occurred at the interview I cannot say. I only
know that at its close Godfrey’s voice was husky and thick as he wrung
my hand, and said:
“Farewell, Ettie; be good to her. I don’t know if I’ll ever come home
again.”
Then he went away, and I found Gertie in a kind of faint, from which she
did not recover until long after I heard the whistle of the train which
took Godfrey to New York.