“She is better,—she will live,” the doctor said, as he met her look of recognition when her sleep was over. “Quiet now is what she needs.”
And then Gertie started to leave the room, but the white fingers closed tightly round hers, and seeing that, Colonel Schuyler bade her stay.
So Gertie stayed that afternoon, and sat by Edith’s side, and smoothed the tangled hair and bathed the pale forehead, and held the cooling drink to the parched lips; and once when the baby cried in the next room she went and took it up, and, soothing it into quiet, laid it back upon its dainty bed.
Gertie was a natural nurse, and she covered herself with so much glory that day at Schuyler Hill that the colonel himself unbent to her, and sent her home in his carriage because of a rain which was falling, and asked her to come again.
And Gertie went often during the weeks of Edith’s illness, and the sick woman felt better and happier when Gertie was in the room beside her, where she could look at her and touch her if she chose. There had been consciousness for half an hour or more after the birth of her child, but instead of joy that “a man was born into the world,” there had swept over her a wave of bitter anguish as she remembered the home in Dorset Street, and the other little one, of whom Colonel Schuyler never heard, and whose father slept under the evergreen which she could see from her window nodding in the autumn wind, and bending toward her as it seemed in an attitude of menace.
They had brought her baby for her to see, but the touch of its hand on her cheek had awakened such intense love, and remorse, and pity and longing for the other child dead so long ago, that she had writhed in agony and pushed her boy away, while her wandering mind went far, far down into the deepest depths of darkness as she reviewed a page of her life which she had thought sealed forever. How awful were the hours of those days when the pine tree nodded and grinned and laughed and threw its long arms at her, and Abelard came and stood beside her with sad, reproachful eyes.
Oh, it was horrible, and from this horror Gertie’s voice had called her back, and she clung to the young girl, and insisted upon having her with her as much as possible, and said to herself:
“It’s because of her care for that grave that I love her so much;” and when one day during her convalescence Gertie came to her and told her of Miss Armstrong’s sudden illness, and that the school was closed indefinitely, and asked what she should do for a teacher, Edith considered for a moment, and then said:
“Go, please, to Colonel Schuyler’s room, and ask him to come here, and you wait in the hall till you see him go out.”
“What is it, darling? Can I do anything for you?” the colonel asked, as he bent over his wife.