It was a cold wintry night, and a February rain was beating against the windows of the house on the Hill, when Edith was roused from sleep by Norah, who said:
“If you please, Mrs. Schuyler, Gertie Westbrooke has come all alone from the cottage in the rain and dark, and says my cousin is dying and wants to see you. She’s very bad, and talking such queer things.”
Scarcely knowing what she was doing, Edith arose and began to dress, while the colonel followed more leisurely, feeling annoyed at Mary Rogers for being sick on such a night as this, and sending for his wife, thereby putting him to great discomfort and inconvenience, for if Edith went to the cottage he of course must go also. And in a short time they were in their carriage and driving rapidly down the road toward the house, where Gertie was anxiously expecting them.
As soon as she delivered her message she ran back through the darkness and rain, and when the carriage drew up before the gate she stood in the open doorway, her hair all wet and dripping, and her face pale with fear as she clutched Edith’s dress, and whispered:
“I’m so glad you have come. She wanted you so much and said there was something she must tell you. But I’m afraid she can’t now, because she’s worse. She cannot talk. The doctor is there. I went for him first, and then back by the Hill. Come quick, please,” and Gertie hurried her on to the apartment where Mary Rogers lay, her face ashen pale, and her eyes fastening themselves with a look of intense longing and eagerness upon Edith as she came in. When a young girl Mrs. Rogers had suffered from an affection of the heart, which she supposed she had entirely outlived. Within the last few months, however, it had troubled her at intervals, and on the night of the severe attack she had told Gertie she was not well, and gone early to bed. Gertie, who slept upstairs, was awakened, she said, by loud groans, and hurrying to her auntie’s room she found her on the floor, where she had fallen in her attempt to strike a light. Her first words after Gertie helped her back to bed were:
“I am going to die, and I must see Mrs. Schuyler and tell her something. Go for her quick, and the doctor, too, if you are not afraid.”
She could talk then, but her powers of speech were gone now, and when Edith went up to her and said: “What can I do for you?” her lips tried in vain to frame the words she would say, while great drops of sweat stood upon her face, wrung out by her intense desire to speak. It was hardly paralysis, or apoplexy either, the doctor said, but a kind of cross between the two, and while it left her mind perfectly clear, it took from her the power of utterance, and made her as helpless as a child.
“Can’t you tell me what it is you wish to say to me?” Edith asked, as she took the hand which was raised feebly to meet hers.
There was a shake of the head, and Edith continued: “Perhaps you can write it?”