Edith Lyle

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.