THE SEARCH IN LONDON.
They went first to the —— St. Hospital, where officers and nurses and
matron had all been changed since the night when the child Heloise was
left at the door. But the books remained, and after a long time they
found the one bearing date nineteen years back. Oh, how eagerly Edith
turned the worn, yellow leaves till she came to the date she remembered
so well.
“January —, 18—. Was received into the house a female child, found in a
basket on the doorstep with the name Heloise pinned upon its dress.”
That was the one, and Edith’s voice trembled so much that she could not
speak distinctly, as she asked of the person in attendance:
“Where is this child now? Who took her from here?—and when?”
Mrs. Simmons, the matron, could not tell. She had herself been there
little more than a year, but a careful searching of the books brought to
light the fact that not long after the night when the baby Heloise was
found on the steps, it had been taken away by a _Mrs. Stover_, whose
daughter Anne was a nurse in the Hospital at the time, and who lived at
No. —— Dorset Street. This agreed with the story as told by Mrs.
Barrett, and thus far all seemed perfectly plain and easy to the excited
woman, whom Colonel Schuyler followed mechanically wheresoever she went.
She was taking the lead, not he, but he submitted with a good grace, and
went without a word to No —— Dorset Street. It was up two flights of
broken, creaking, dirty stairs, and Edith shuddered as she thought how
the feet of her own child had probably been up and down this dark
stairway, while she, the mother, had lived in luxury and ease.
No. —— was a dirty, wretched apartment, reeking with filth, swarming
with children, and smelling of onions and boiled cabbage, and that odor
peculiar to rooms where the people sleep and cook and eat and live, and
seldom wash themselves. The family were Germans, who could not speak a
word of English, and stared wonderingly at the beautiful lady, who
succeeded in making herself understood. But she might as well have
talked to blocks of wood for aught they knew of any tenants there before
them. She managed, however, to make out that on the floor above was an
old woman, who had occupied the same room for many years, and to her
Edith went next, feeling when she stood in the neat, home-like, though
humble apartment of Mrs. Myers as if she had stepped into paradise. Mrs.
Myers was very old, and had lived there thirty years, and remembered the
Stovers, who occupied the floor below.
“Tidy, clever people, and not at all like the ’orrid Dutch cattle there
now,” she said. “There was old Marm Stover, and her two gals Hanny and
Mary. Han worked in some ’orspital, and Mary for some grand lady in the
country.”
“Was there ever a child living with them,—a little girl with blue eyes
and golden hair?” Edith asked.
And the woman replied:
“There was, mem, and a deal of gossip it made about the girls, though
folks mostly laid it to Han, but I never b’lieved a word on’t. It was
took from the ’orspital, they said, and had a curis name,—Eloise,—and
Mary claimed it as ’ern; and when old Mann Stover died with the cholera,
Mary, who was out to service, took the child away, and I’ve never seen
her sense, or ’earn tell of her. Was the child anything to you, mem?”
“Yes, everything,—it was _mine_,” Edith said, impetuously, while her
husband, who did not care to have her quite so outspoken, even to this
old woman, said, as he took her hand to lead her away:
“Yes, yes,—thank you, Mrs. Myers; this lady has been sick, and we,—yes,
we are both anxious to find some trace of the child lost so long ago:
but I think it doubtful if we do,—yes, very doubtful. Come, Edith, we
may as well go.”
But Edith did not move. She must know something more, and she said:
“Have you no idea where this Mary Stover lived? Had she no friends who
could tell me about her?”
“None as I knows on. I ain’t seen or ’earn of her better’n eighteen
year. Mebbe the perlice could worrit her out for you.”
Edith had not thought of that, and hurried her husband into the street,
and insisted upon going at once to the head of the police.
But the colonel demurred. If they could proceed quietly, he would rather
do so, he said, and they would not call in the aid of the police until
they had exhausted every means in their power.
And they did exhaust every means; they inquired everywhere, and hunted
up every family of Stovers in the city, and went to the hospital again,
and went to Mrs. Myers to see if she could not think of something
forgotten when they were there before. But all was of no avail. Nobody
had ever heard of Mary Stover, and Edith’s heart was heavy as lead when
at last the case was given to the police, who had little hope of
success.
Worn out, disappointed, and discouraged, Edith took her bed at the hotel
where they were stopping, while the colonel, who was not so very much
aggrieved at the failure of the search, thought to please and interest
her by making some inquiries with regard to _Gertie Westbrooke_, about
whose antecedents there was so much doubt and mystery. To trace her
history seemed far easier than to trace the mythical Mary Stover, and he
went first to the company where her annuity was payable. In answer to
his inquiries as to whether they could give him any information with
regard to the family, he was told that quite recently a Mrs. William
Westbrooke had done some business with them in the way of a deposit. She
was a widow, they said, and had come from Florence, where she had lived
for many years. It was the same name, possibly the same family,—he could
inquire; they could give him the lady’s address.
This he reported to Edith, who roused herself to some interest in the
matter after being assured that no parent or guardian could take Gertie
from them after all these years.
“If I thought they could I would not try to find them, for I can’t give
Gertie up,” she said; while her husband felt that _he_ would be almost
as loath to part with Gertie as Edith herself.
And so with more real interest now than he had felt when searching for
Mary Stover, he drove with Edith one day to the handsome lodgings
occupied by Mrs. William Westbrooke, recently from Florence. She was a
little, pale, sandy-haired woman, of forty or thereabouts, very much
dressed, and having in her manner something haughty and supercilious as
she received the strangers, and, without requesting them to be seated,
asked what she could do for them.
It was the colonel who did the talking this time, while Edith listened
in a preoccupied kind of way, which, nevertheless, did not prevent her
from hearing all that was said.
“We are Americans,” the colonel began, “and we have a young girl in our
family of whose antecedents we would learn something. As you have the
same name, and bank at the same firm where her annuity of forty pounds a
year is paid, it occurred to me to inquire if you have ever heard of a
girl called Gertie, or Gertrude Westbrooke, nineteen or twenty years
old.”
“Gertie!—Gertrude!” Mrs. Westbrooke said. “I did know a child by that
name years ago; but tell me, please, how she came to be in America
living with you?”
It was Edith who talked now, and who told rapidly all she knew of Gertie
Westbrooke and her so-called mother, Mrs. Rogers.
“Is it the same? Do you think it the same?” she asked; and Mrs.
Westbrooke replied:
“I think it the same; yes.”
“Who is she then? Are _you_ her step-mother?” Edith asked; and, with a
frown on her wizened little face, the lady replied:
“No, she is nothing to me. She was adopted by my husband’s first wife
just after the loss of her baby, and, as I understood, at the
instigation of her nurse, who must have been this Mrs. Rogers. The first
Mrs. Westbrooke was greatly attached to the child, and when she died she
settled upon it forty pounds a year, and gave it expressly to the care
of her maid.
“About a year after her death Mr. Westbrooke married me, and took me to
his home in London. I did not like children, and this one was in my way,
and as my husband did not care for it either, we gave it at last to the
nurse, who took it to keep for her own. My first child was born soon
after, and the next year we went to Florence, where my husband died, and
where I have lived until within the last few months. Of Gertie I have
never heard since. I was told that the nurse, Mary, was married and
living comfortably; but from what you say I have no doubt that the young
lady in question is the girl, and am glad she has fallen into so good
hands. She was very pretty, with great blue eyes and bright auburn
hair——”
“What was the name of the nurse?” Edith asked, and the lady replied:
“I don’t remember whom she married, but dare say it was Rogers. My
housekeeper will know; she saw her married. Her maiden name was
Stover,—_Mary Stover_.”
“_Mary Stover!_” and Edith started to her feet as quickly as if a heavy
blow had smitten her. “Mary Stover,—tell me if you know where the child
came from at first, who were her parents, and how came Mrs. Westbrooke
by her?”
“I do not know as she had any parents, unless it were Mary Stover
herself. I always suspected her of being the real mother, she was so
attached to the child and so mysterious about it. She brought it to Mrs.
Westbrooke from some Foundling Hospital, I believe, where her sister
Anne was nurse.”
“Oh, Gertie, Gertie, thank Heaven,” Edith gasped, and the next moment
she lay at her husband’s feet with a face as white and rigid and still
as are the faces of the dead!
There was great excitement then in Mrs. Westbrooke’s rooms, ringing of
bells, gathering of servants, and hurrying for physicians, three of whom
came together and concurred in pronouncing it nothing worse than a
fainting fit, from which the lady would soon recover.
“Shall I order a room for her here?” Mrs. Westbrooke asked, anxious to
relieve herself as soon as possible from her rather troublesome guests.
The colonel, who knew Edith would be happier in their own apartments at
the hotel, declined Mrs. Westbrooke’s offer, and as soon as
consciousness returned took his wife in his arms, and, carrying her to
the carriage waiting for them, was driven back to his hotel, where he
laid her upon the couch, and then sat down beside her, waiting for her
to speak.
For a moment, however, she could not, and she lay perfectly still with
the light of a great and unutterable happiness shining in her eyes and
illuminating every feature.
“Edith, darling, you are very glad?” the colonel asked at last.
“Yes, Howard, so glad, oh, so glad;” Edith replied. “God has been so
good to me, so good that I never can thank Him enough. That Gertie
should be my daughter and living with me all the time; oh, God, I do
thank Thee, I do. Howard, you are glad too, glad for Gertie?”
She questioned him eagerly, and he answered her without the slightest
hesitancy:
“Yes, Edith, very glad.”
And he was glad, and when, as he was leaving Mrs. Westbrooke, that lady
said to him, “Pardon me, if I seem curious, but what is the girl Gertie
to this lady?” he promptly answered: “Gertie is _our_ daughter,” and
with that little pronoun _our_ he adopted Gertie into his heart and
love, and felt that she was his as well as Edith’s.
“Our daughter!” That was what he called her to his wife, who clasped her
arms around his neck in token that she appreciated this last great
kindness of his.
Then they talked together of the beautiful girl whom they had come so
far to seek, when all the time she was a part of their own household,
and as they talked there naturally enough crept into Edith’s mind the
shadow of a fear, lest, after all, there might be some mistake. But
there was none apparently, for the colonel made every inquiry possible
with regard to Mary Rogers, finding beyond a doubt that she was Mary
Stover, and that her sister Anne had been a nurse in —— Street Hospital
nineteen years before, and that it was by their mother, then living in
Dorset Street, that the child was taken when it left the hospital. There
could be no doubt, and as Edith was far too weak and too much overcome
to undertake the journey home immediately, the colonel decided to remain
a week or two in London, and wrote at once to Glenthorpe, asking Robert
to bring Emma to them, but reserving the secret of Gertie’s birth until
they came. Then he wrote to Gertie herself, but thought it better not to
confide the whole to her until he saw her face to face. So he merely
said that being in London he had thought it well to make some inquiries
at the —— Bank, and, if possible, discover something of her family.
“And dear Gertie,” he wrote, “you will be no less astonished and
delighted than I was to find that beyond the shadow of a doubt you are
_our own daughter_. I cannot tell you all on paper. I only assure you
that it is true, and when we return I will explain it to you. Mrs.
Schuyler is not very well, but I hope she will be able to return in the
Cuba, which sails in two weeks. With love and a kiss for little Arthur,
who, I trust, is well, I am,
“Your affectionate father, H. SCHUYLER.”
This was his letter, which he read to Edith, who said: “But, Howard, you
never told her how my heart is aching for her, or gave her my love or
anything.”
“Never mind,” the colonel answered, good-naturedly. “You will have all
your lifetime to tell her of your love.”
And so the letter which would tell Gertie so much, and yet so little,
was sent, and two days after Robert Macpherson arrived in London,
bringing with him Emma, the little lady of Glenthorpe, who was perfectly
wild over her husband and her beautiful home among the Highlands, and
insisted that her father should go there if only for a few days. “You
must see what a good mistress I make, and what a high-bred lady I am to
the people who just worship Robert, and I do believe like him all the
more because his mother was one of them. I begin to believe in what are
called _mésalliances_ after all.”
Now was the time to tell the story of another _mésalliance_, and the
colonel told it, while Robert and Emma listened breathlessly, and when
the _denouement_ was reached the latter exclaimed, joyfully:
“Oh, I am so glad, that it is Gertie. She is your cousin, Robert, your
own cousin, and it is all just like a story. Oh, I am _so_ glad!”
She evidently did not think it so dreadful to be connected with the
Lyles. She had seen the white-haired, sweet-faced old woman in Alnwick,
and seen Jenny Nesbit, too, for Robert had taken her there to call, and
she had fallen in love with the grandmother, and tried to pet Godfrey
Schuyler, now a big boy in jacket and trousers, and had sickened and
grown hot and cold by turns at the vulgarity of Mrs. Nesbit, and then in
the splendor and éclat of her home at Glenthorpe had forgotten them all
and remembered only that she was Robert’s wife, the great lady of the
neighborhood and the happiest woman living. Gertie should come and live
with her, she said, and marry a Scottish Lord; but Edith shook her head;
Gertie was hers. She could not part with her, and her heart was full of
an unutterable yearning to behold the young girl again, and hear her
call her mother, and she could hardly wait for the day when the Cuba
sailed at last from the harbor of Liverpool, and she knew she was going
home to Gertie.