IN NEW YORK.
Godfrey was very sick, and had been for some days, though it was not
until the morning when the telegram was forwarded that his fever assumed
the typhoid form and danger was apprehended. A message had been sent to
his Aunt Rossiter when he first became ill, but she was in Washington
with Miss Creighton, and as the landlady knew nothing of the Calverts,
her only alternative was to telegraph to Schuyler Hill, when the matter
became alarming and her boarder delirious. Oh, how he tossed and rolled
and raved and talked, fancying himself on the sea, and twice throwing
himself out of bed because that was the proper thing to do when the ship
gave a great lurch as the waves broke over it. Then he was sea-sick and
tried to vomit, and wore himself out in his efforts, and screamed to a
fancied _Bob_ in the upper berth, to know how he was coming through.
Then he stormed at _Dan_ for bringing him sea-water to drink, and when
the ship began to pitch again he tried to stand upon his head, and then
sprang back upon his feet to preserve his equilibrium, he said to the
scandalized and horrified Mrs. Wilson, who fled from him in dismay as
the worst-behaved sick man she had ever seen. Then as the vessel ceased
to pitch he grew more quiet, and only rolled with the imaginary ship,
and talked about “_La Sœur_,” and begged his landlady to bring her to
him, and promised to stop rolling if she would.
Utterly at her wits’ end to know what he meant by _La Sœur_, or what to
do with him, Mrs. Wilson was waiting impatiently for some response to
her telegram, when the bell rang and a little, white-faced girl stepped
into the hall and announced herself as having come to take care of Mr.
Schuyler.
“_You_ take care of him?” Mrs. Wilson exclaimed, when she had recovered
from her first astonishment and surprise. “You take care of him? It is
impossible. Why, it needs a strong man to manage him; he is just awful;
he’s got it in his head that he is sea-sick, and rolls and pitches with
the boat, and calls to Bob in the upper berth, and insists upon my
bringing him _la surr_, whatever that may be——”
“Yes, that’s _sister_, that’s French,—that’s I,” Gertie said. “I am his
sister, and have come to nurse him. His father is in Europe, his eldest
sister Julia is in Florida, the next one is in Scotland, and so there
was no one to come but me. Will you take me to him, please?”
After this explanation there was no demurring on Mrs. Wilson’s part. If
that young girl was his sister she had a right to nurse her brother, and
she led the way to the third floor, where in the room looking into the
area Godfrey was still rolling with the ship, and occasionally mimicking
and calling to some _cats_ fighting on the fence in the yard below.
These cats had been the bane of Godfrey’s life even before he was sick.
Regularly every night they came, sometimes two, sometimes three, and
sometimes half a dozen, and made the neighborhood hideous with their
music.
Godfrey had thrown his boot-jack at them, and his poker and soap-dish
and bits of coal, and when all these failed he had tried the effect of
fire-crackers and frightened the people opposite, who thought him a
madman trying to fire the house! And still the cats fought on, and since
Godfrey’s illness they had been terrible, and he was up on his elbow
“sca-ating” to them, when the door opened and Gertie was ushered in. He
knew her, and forgetting the cats and the ship, and Bob in the upper
berth, he hailed her advent with a cry of joy.
“_La Sœur, La Sœur_,” he cried, “you’ve come,—you’ve come at last, and
now you’ll stop that infernal noise and make the ship stand still. I’m
pounded nearly to a jelly with all this rolling and pitching.”
He held his arms toward her, and she went to him and laid her cool hands
on his burning brow, and pushed back his tangled curls, but did not kiss
him. She could not bring herself to do that, even if she were his
sister, but she held his hot hands in hers and tried to soothe and quiet
him, and told him she would kill the cats and make the ship stand still,
and talked to him till he grew quiet and fell away to sleep.
When the doctor came, he was told that Mr. Schuyler’s sister was there,
and Gertie blushed and felt herself a guilty thing when he addressed her
as Miss Schuyler, and gave directions about the medicines she was to
give, and asked if there was no older person to come in her place.
“None but the housekeeper, and Godfrey prefers me,” she said, while
Godfrey, who was listening, chimed in:
“That’s so. I’d rather have Gertie than the whole world besides. She’s a
trump,—she’s a brick,—she’s a——”
“Hush, Godfrey, if you want me to stay you must not talk,” Gertie said,
laying her hand upon his lips.
He kissed it, of course, and when she snatched it away, told her to put
it back again if she did not want him to roll out of bed with the ship,
which was lurching awfully! And she put it back and held it there so
tight that he could neither kiss it nor speak, nor scarcely breathe.
“Godfrey,” she said a little sternly, when the doctor had gone out, “if
you do not behave and stop talking and trying to kiss me, and if you
attempt to roll out of bed, or get up, no matter how much the ship
rocks, I will not stay with you a moment, but go home in the next
train.”
This had the desired effect and brought forth earnest protestations of
intended good behavior from Godfrey, who promised not to move but “to
stand to his guns,” even if the ship should turn a complete somersault,
which he guessed it would, judging from the way it was reeling and
tossing now.
After that he was comparatively quiet, or if he became very restless and
showed a disposition to repeat his tumbling exploits when the sea was
badly in his head, a word from Gertie controlled him and kept him on his
pillow. But his fever ran higher and higher every day, and his pulse
beat faster and faster as the imaginary ship went plunging, through the
waves which threatened to engulf it.
Gertie had told him she was his sister, that his father had written so
from London, and once when he seemed something like himself she read the
letter to him, but he repelled the idea with scorn. She was _not_ his
sister. He did not want any more sisters. She was Gertie,—his
Gertie,—his in spite of everybody, he said, and he seemed to know just
when she was with him, even if he did not see her, and when she left the
room he would moan and rave and talk until she came back, and by a touch
of her hand or a single word made him quiet again.
And so the days went on, and the fever increased, and the vessel rocked
worse and worse, and Godfrey’s brain grew more and more affected, and
Gertie’s heart was very sore with the fear that he would die. “Brother”
she called him now when she spoke to him, and he was no longer furious
as he had been at that name coming from her lips. He did not seem to
know what she said, only that she was with him,—that it was her hand
which gave the medicine he would take from no one else,—her hand which
bathed his temples and kept him firmly in his place when the sea was
doing its worst,—her hand which rescued his poor, aching head from the
stewardess, who was boiling water in it to make him some beef-tea. Oh,
what dreadful fancies he had,—fancies which were wearing him out so
fast, and which nobody could manage but Gertie. And her strength was
giving way, and the roses were fading from her cheek, when one morning,
about ten days after her arrival in New York, a servant knocked at the
door and ushered in Miss Rossiter.
She had returned from Washington the night before, and, finding the note
which had been sent to her when Godfrey became so ill, had come
immediately after breakfast to see how he was. With a feeling that it
would not be proper for her to go into his sick-room, Alice, who was
stopping up town, remained at home, bidding Miss Rossiter give her love
to Godfrey, and tell him she would come if he wished to see her.
Mrs. Wilson was out marketing when Miss Rossiter came, and whatever
information that lady received concerning her nephew, she had from the
servant who escorted her to his room.
“His sister with him! I did not know she had returned,” she said, in
some surprise, when in reply to the question, “Who takes care of him?”
the servant said:
“His sister, ma’am. She has been here more than a week.”
Miss Rossiter had spent a day in Hampstead the previous summer, and seen
Gertie; but she had no thought of her now, and was utterly astonished
and confounded, as she entered the room, to find Gertie Westbrooke
sitting by Godfrey, who was sleeping from the effects of a powerful
opiate which the doctor had administered an hour or so before.
At the sound of the opening door she looked up and gave a warning
“Sh-hh!” as Miss Rossiter exclaimed, loudly:
“Gertie,—Gertie Westbrooke! Why are _you_ here calling yourself his
_sister_? Are you not ashamed? What does it mean? Tell me before I
venture to stop a moment in the same room with you!”
And the highly indignant and rigidly virtuous spinster held back her
clothes lest they should come in contact with the garments of the young
girl, thus outraging every rule of propriety if not of decency.
Alice, who had been and in some sense still considered herself his
affianced wife, would not so much as come to the house unless it was
necessary, while even _she_, a matron of fifty and more, had some doubts
about going herself into the room; and lo, here was the young girl,—this
stranger,—sitting by him with the utmost familiarity, and bidding her be
quiet and speak lower lest the sick man should awaken.
Miss Rossiter was greatly shocked, and, as her first question was not
answered except by a look of innocent wonder, she repeated it angrily:
“Why are you here, passing for his sister? Don’t you know your good name
will be ruined forever?”
Only an hour before the doctor had said to Gertie:
“There is but one chance in a hundred for your brother. If he can be
made to sleep and be kept quiet, he may recover, but if the paroxysms
and his fancy about the ship return he will die. Do your best for him.”
In dumb despair Gertie listened to him with such pain in her heart as
sisters never feel.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, and her white lips quivered, but she did
not cry as she took her seat by Godfrey to watch him while he slept, and
thought what life would be to her without him. “Godfrey dead, Godfrey
dead,” she whispered, softly. “I should want to die, too. Oh, Godfrey,
you are more than my brother, more than my brother.”
It was just as she said this that Miss Rossiter came in, and the sick
man stirred upon his pillow as if about to waken. He must not wake. It
was death to do so, and Gertie bent protectingly over him as a mother
bends over her restless child, and until it was twice repeated she did
not answer the astonished woman’s question, “Why are you here, and why
call yourself his sister?”
Then she turned, and fixing her blue eyes steadily on the lady, she
said, in a low whisper:
“Col. Schuyler is in Europe; there was no one else to come, and I _am_
his sister; read that.”
She had the colonel’s letter in her pocket, where she kept it
constantly, and she passed it to Miss Rossiter, who read it rapidly, and
then, more surprised and bewildered than she had ever been in her life,
began to question Gertie, who, of course, could offer no explanation.
“The thing is simply impossible. Colonel Schuyler was not in Europe
nineteen years ago,” Miss Rossiter said, after a little mental
calculation.
“Mother might have been in America,” was Gertie’s response, quietly and
sadly spoken, and then Miss Rossiter began again to question her as to
what she herself knew of her antecedents, or what she had heard from
Mary Rogers.
The murmur of voices disturbed Godfrey, who moaned about the ship which
would not be still. Then Gertie said to her companion:
“Miss Rossiter, you _must not_ talk. If Godfrey gets well he must sleep;
the doctor said so. He has fancied himself in a ship at sea, and endured
all the agonies of sea-sickness. I have succeeded in making him believe
he was on the land, but if the ship gets back into his head, he will
die.”
She spoke decidedly, like one who had a right, and the proud woman bit
her lip with vexation, but obeyed the girl who had so suddenly come
before her in a new phase of character. She could not credit the story
she had heard, and yet there it was in the colonel’s handwriting, “You
are our daughter.” Even _she_ never thought of Edith as connected with
it, and in her own mind she ran over the name of every lady of her
acquaintance who could by any possibility be implicated in the affair.
But all in vain. She could find no clue to the mystery, and was obliged
to give it up and wait for further developments when the colonel
returned. Though she did not fully believe the story she felt more
kindly toward Gertie, and when at last Godfrey awoke and was in the ship
again, and insisted that _La Sœur_ should sit behind him and hold his
head on her bosom to keep it from bumping against the side of the berth,
she bade Gertie sit there, and offered no remonstrance when the pale
face bent so low over the flushed, feverish one that the girl’s bright
hair mingled with the brown curls of the sick man who called her “_La
petite capitaine_,” and said she was steering him through the waves like
an old salt!
Miss Rossiter could not go home while matters were in this state, and
she wrote a note to Alice, asking that a dressing-gown might be sent to
her with a few other articles necessary for the sick-room. Alice brought
them herself, and sat in the parlor and cried when Miss Rossiter told
her of Godfrey, and opened her eyes with wonder when told of Gertie and
the relation she bore to Colonel Schuyler, if his word could be trusted.
Alice believed it, and it lifted a load from her mind. If Gertie was
Godfrey’s sister, then she ceased to be a rival, and in the first
revulsion of feeling Alice felt very kindly toward Gertie, and expressed
so strong a desire to see her that, at Miss Rossiter’s request, Gertie
went down to the little lady, who received her rather gushingly. Alice
forgave easily, and when she saw Gertie so pale and worn, and knew that
it came from watching by Godfrey when there was no one else to care for
him, she forgot her old animosity entirely, and kissing her twice told
her what a good girl she was to stay with Godfrey when he was so sick,
and the fever catching, perhaps.
“And you are his sister, too?” she continued. “It is very strange, but I
am so glad, and everything will turn out well if Godfrey only lives. Do
you think he will?”
Gertie could not tell. He was very sick, she said, and she seemed so
anxious to return to him that Alice arose to go. Standing a moment
irresolutely and looking at Gertie she said:
“You are a nice little girl, and always were, and when Godfrey can
understand, will you tell him I have been here, and that I am so sorry,
and—and——”
She could not quite say what she wanted to, but Gertie knew what she
meant, and answered her:
“I’ll tell him, and do all I can for you. I think it will come right
now.”
She said it sadly, with a pang of regret for the condition of things
which might result in healing the difference between Godfrey and Alice,
and her heart was very heavy as she went back to her patient, who was
conducting himself outrageously. They were in a regular north-easter, he
said, and the ship was bottom side up, and he was bottom side up with
it, and to the horror of his aunt had rolled himself and the bed-clothes
out upon the floor, where he lay calling for _La capitaine_ to come and
right the ship! With the help of her man-servant, who had accompanied
Alice, and who was to stay as long as he was needed, Miss Rossiter got
her nephew back to bed, and when Gertie came in he was panting with
exhaustion, and evidently bracing himself against another lurch.
“Don’t desert,” he whispered to Gertie. “We had a tremendous swell while
you were away, and things generally got topsy-turvy.”
That _swell_ was the last. He never attempted to roll again, but sank
gradually into a state of unconsciousness more alarming than the lurches
of the imaginary ship had been. The vessel was quiet now, wrecked, and
going down so fast, it seemed to the heart-broken girl who watched
beside poor Godfrey day and night with a look of anguish on her face
which touched Miss Rossiter, and awoke within her a feeling of interest
for the heart-sore creature, whose pain she in a measure understood.
At last the colonel came. He had gone straight to Hampstead within an
hour after landing in New York, and hearing from Mrs. Tiffe of his son’s
illness, and that a telegram to the effect that he was worse had been
received that afternoon, he had taken the night train back to the city,
leaving Edith at Schuyler Hill, as she was not able to accompany him.
Thus it was near midnight when he reached Mrs. Wilson’s boarding-house,
and asked eagerly for his son.
“Very bad,—dying we fear,” was the report, and he sped swiftly up the
stairs, stumbling in the upper landing over a little figure which sat
crying on the floor.
It was Alice who had come down that afternoon to inquire for Godfrey,
and on learning of his condition had refused to go home, and lingered
outside the door of the room she would not enter lest she should be
guilty of an indiscretion, or, perhaps, contract the fever.
Poor Godfrey, how white and ghastly and quiet he was now, as with his
eyes shut he lay with his head pillowed on Gertie’s arm, and one of his
hands holding to her dress as if afraid of losing her.
Gertie had sat thus for more than an hour gazing upon the pale face she
held, her eyes heavy with unshed tears, for she could not cry any more.
Her heart ached too hard for that. Godfrey was dying,—_her_ Godfrey,—he
said he was the last time he spoke to her, and he had called her his
little Gertie, and kissed her hand and bade her stay with him on the
ship which was sailing in smooth waters now and was almost at the shore.
And he was hers,—her brother, perhaps, but still hers more than anybody
else’s in all the wide, wide world.
Alice had sent a message to her: “Kiss him once for me!” but Gertie
would not do it. She might, perhaps, kiss a dead Godfrey, but Godfrey
living must know when she kissed him, and why, and so she only held his
head and wiped the sweat from his brow, and let her own face fall over
and touch his for a minute, while she whispered in his ear and asked if
he still heard her and knew she was with him.
And it was thus she sat when the colonel came, and going up to his son
called him by his name. But there was no response, no sign, and the
physician who stood waiting, said:
“He heeds no one but his sister. Speak to him, Miss Schuyler. See if he
knows you now.”
Then, over the whiteness of Gertie’s face, there came a flush at hearing
herself called Miss Schuyler in the presence of the colonel, but she put
her lips close to Godfrey’s ear, and said:
“Godfrey, do you know me yet?”
“Yes, _my_ Gertie, stick to the ship, we are about ready to land,” was
the faint reply; and with a bitter cry, as if at the sight of the man
who called himself her father every barrier had gone down, Gertie gave
way, and winding both her arms round the form she held, sobbed
passionately:
“Oh, Godfrey, my darling, if you _can_ hear me now, listen while I tell
you how much I love you, for I do,—I _do_, oh, Godfrey, oh, Colonel
Schuyler,” and she lifted her white face piteously to him. “Forgive me,
if I am wrong, I cannot,—_cannot_ love him as a brother.”
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and it was in vain that Godfrey
whispered:
“Steady now, _La petite capitaine_, the boat is running into port.”