THE BATTLE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.
From the moment when Edith fell fainting across her mother’s feet, she
had never known a moment’s consciousness, but had either lain like one
from whom life had fled forever, or raved in wild delirium as she tossed
from side to side, trying in vain to free herself from the strong arms
which in mercy held her so fast. Her lost baby was her theme; but at
first the colonel attached no meaning to it, thinking it but natural
that her mind should dwell upon the little one dead before it was born.
Still, it was strange, he thought, that she should rave about it so
furiously, begging him to go and find it and rescue it from the streets,
and bring it to her, so she could tell it she was not altogether to
blame.
“Oh, my daughter! my lost daughter!” she would moan; “where are you now,
and where have you been these many years, when I thought you dead in
your little grave?”
Then she would whisper to some fancied person standing by her bed, and
ask him to forgive her for the wrong done to his child, and when the
colonel said to her, gently, “Edith, darling, you have not harmed our
child,” she would answer him:
“No,—not yours! Oh, you don’t know,—you would kill me if you did! Oh, my
baby! my baby, who went in the rain!”
What she meant the colonel could not guess, and he grew old and worn as
he watched beside her, listening to her ravings, and trying to find some
cause for them. She never mentioned her mother, and did not know when
she died; but she seemed quieter that day, and while the people were at
the grave she suffered her husband, for the first time since her
illness, to hold her hand in his; but her lips quivered and the tears
rained down her cheeks as she kept whispering: “I am so sorry,
Howard,—so sorry! and I did not know it, or I would have told you.”
“Sorry for what, darling? There’s nothing to be sorry for,” the colonel
said, as he kissed her tears away and bade her try to sleep. She knew
Godfrey, and as if feeling intuitively that she had a friend in him, she
tried to tell him something about a child lost in the streets, whom _he_
was to find and bring to her, “pure, spotless, unharmed.” She laid great
stress on the last words, and Godfrey promised to do her bidding if she
would go to sleep and not distress herself so much.
“I will, I will. See, I’m asleep!” she said, closing her eyes tightly,
and lying so still that in a few moments she _was_ asleep.
When she awoke Gertie was standing near, and at sight of her a bright
smile broke over Edith’s face as she looked up at Godfrey, and said:
“You found her, didn’t you, pure and unspotted as an angel?”
Nobody knew at all what she meant, or spoke to her as she fondled
Gertie’s face and hands, and asked her where she had been so long, and
how it was she was so fair and sweet, so different from the girls in the
street. Then for a moment consciousness struggled to assert itself, and
she seemed to know who Gertie was, and whispered to her:
“Stay with me,—I’m better when I see you.”
Once before Gertie’s presence had called her back from the border land
of death, and now she was so much quieter with her there that Gertie
never left her except for the rest which she absolutely needed. In this
condition of affairs Godfrey had no chance for seeing Gertie alone,
except on one occasion, when he met her for a moment in a side hall, and
stopping her as she was passing him, said to her:
“Gertie, have you not changed your mind? Must your answer to me be
always the same?”
“Yes, Godfrey, always the same. Go back to Alice; try to love her. You
will be happier so,” was Gertie’s reply, and Godfrey answered:
“Never, so long as I have my senses. I will wait for you a thousand
years.”
He tried to kiss her hand, but she snatched it from him, and hurried
away to the sick-room. The next day he returned to New York, and soon
after, in a letter to her father, Julia spoke of her brother as having
escorted Alice to a grand party given by the Montgomeries on Madison
Avenue.
This piece of news the colonel managed to convey to Gertie, who felt a
pain in her heart as she guessed what the end would probably be. Edith
was better now. The fearful paroxysms had ceased, and she lay very quiet
and still, seldom speaking to any one, but shuddering and manifesting
actual distress when her husband came to her with words and acts of
tenderness.
“Don’t, please; I can’t bear it,” she said to him once, when he brought
a bouquet and laid it upon her pillow.
He thought the perfume offended her, and took the flowers away; then,
sitting down beside her, told her how glad he was that she was better,
and how desolate the house seemed without her.
For a moment she listened to him while every muscle in her face worked
painfully; then, bursting into tears, she put up both her hands to hide
her face, and cried:
“Don’t, Howard, you break my heart. Oh, Howard, my husband, pity me, but
don’t make it harder with words of love. Go away, please, and do not
come again till I send for you; then you will want to go.”
He felt hurt and wounded, but did as she bade him, and left her with
Gertie; nor did he see her again for one whole week, except when she was
asleep, and could not be disturbed by his presence. Then he would go in,
and bending over her kiss her face softly, and smooth the golden brown
hair, and calling her his poor darling leave behind some little token to
show that he had been there.
At last Edith asked for her mother suddenly, and in a way which admitted
of no prevarication, and Gertie told her everything, as carefully as
possible.
“Colonel Schuyler bade us do whatever we thought you would like to have
done, and he ordered the casket from New York, and was down stairs
during the services,” Gertie said, and then Edith’s heart seemed
bursting with a storm of sobs and piteous cries, which Gertie could not
understand.
“Oh, my husband, my noble husband, what will he say? what will he say?”
she murmured to herself, while Gertie stood looking at her.
At last she grew quiet, and turning to Gertie, said:
“Now tell me how mother died, and who was with her, and what she said.”
And Gertie told her what had passed in the chamber of death, of the
terrible remorse for something which was evidently weighing on Mrs.
Barrett’s mind, the bitter repentance, the peace which came at last, and
the message left for Mrs. Schuyler.
“She was very particular about that,” Gertie said; “for she thought you
might be unhappy, perhaps, if you did not know it, and she said you
would forgive her some time.”
“I may, I’ll try. I hope I do, but it is very hard,” Edith replied, and
then for an hour or more she lay with her eyes closed, though she was
not asleep, and when at last she opened them she asked where her husband
was, and expressed a wish to see him.
Gertie told her that as she was so much better and did not need him
constantly, he had gone to New York for two or three days, she believed.
“His going was very sudden,” she said, “and I knew nothing of it till
just before he went, when he came to me and said it was necessary, and
if you asked for him I was to tell you he would be back soon. I should
not be surprised if he came to-night.”
Instead of manifesting any disappointment Edith seemed relieved at her
husband’s absence, as if it gave her a longer respite; but she little
dreamed why he had gone, or of the fearful storm of anguish through
which he had passed, and which left its marks upon him so plainly, that
when at the close of the third day he came back, Gertie, who met him
first in the hall, started in surprise, and asked what was the matter.
“Nothing, only tired; how is Mrs. Schuyler?” he said, and his voice
sounded husky and unnatural, while it seemed to Gertie as if he stooped
and tottered like an old man as he went slowly up the stairs, holding to
the banisters and pausing once as if to rest.
He did not go straight to Edith’s room, but into his library, and Gertie
took him some biscuits and a glass of wine, for she was frightened at
his weakness and exhaustion. He thanked her for her thoughtfulness, and
said, with a sickly kind of smile:
“I think I do need something. I have scarcely tasted food since I left
home. How many days ago is that, Gertie?”
His manner was strange, and Gertie stayed with him and made him drink
the wine, and eat a cracker, and then watched him curiously as he went
down the hall to Edith’s room, which he entered and shut the door.