Mrs. Sophia Wilson.
This was the telegram received at Schuyler Hill one morning in February, and read by Gertie with a heart throbbing with fear and anxiety for the young man dangerously ill with typhoid fever, and only strangers to care for him. But what could she do? The colonel was in Europe, Julia was in Florida, while she had little Arthur to care for, and even if she had not she could not go herself. It would not be proper under any circumstances, and the colonel would not like it. Something, however, must be done, and calling Mrs. Tiffe she read the telegram and said to her:
“You must go.”
So it was arranged that Mrs. Tiffe should take the next train for New York, which passed in about an hour, and she departed to make the necessary arrangements for her journey, just as the postman came bringing a letter for Gertie. It was from Colonel Schuyler, and Gertie tore it open and read what it contained with emotions which it is impossible to describe. At first she was stunned and bewildered, and thought it must be somebody else, some other Gertie he meant.
“It is not I, surely; it cannot be I, who am his daughter,” she whispered to herself, and then she read again:
“Beyond the shadow of a doubt you are our own daughter.”
It was there in black and white, and it was Colonel Schuyler’s signature, and he signed himself her father. Then the room turned dark to Gertie; there was a humming in her ears, and for a moment she half lost her consciousness, but soon recovering she read the letter for the third time, whispering to herself:
“My father,—his child,—who then was my mother?” and as she said it her face flushed with shame as she thought what she must be if this tale were true and Colonel Schuyler her sire. She never dreamed of associating Edith with the matter in any way. Only Colonel Schuyler had an interest in her, and that of such a nature that the knowledge of it brought far more pain than pleasure to one as pure and good as she.
If Colonel Schuyler were her father, then the man whom she vaguely remembered in the home near London could have been nothing to her, and for this she was not especially sorry. But to lose the gentlewoman whom she had been taught to think her mother, was terrible, and Gertie rebelled against it. She would cling to the memory of that woman, even if she had sinned, as the story of her birth would imply. And this was why Mary Rogers had always been so reticent with regard to her antecedents, why she had spoken with so much certainty of her mother as a lady, and said so little of her father. Possibly Mary had not known who her father was, and possibly the man whom she remembered was only the brother or father of the pale woman who died, and that would account for his dislike of her. These and similar fancies flitted rapidly through Gertie’s mind, until she settled it beyond a doubt that the man she called father, and who she thought was buried in Italy, had been her mother’s near relation, and not her father, that no marriage rite could have hallowed her birth, and as she thought it her face and neck and hands were crimson, and she longed for some place in which to hide her dishonored head. Then, swift as lightning, another thought flashed into her mind, cutting like a knife and making her cringe with pain. If she was Colonel Schuyler’s daughter, even in an unlawful way, then Godfrey was her brother, and alas, she did not want him that. She could never be his wife, she knew; but it was sweet to know he loved her as he would never love another, and she could not be his sister.
“Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey!” she moaned; “this is the hardest part of all. I can forgive my mother, feeling sure that she was more sinned against than sinning, and I may in time forgive your father and mine; but I do not want you for my brother. Godfrey, Godfrey, I never loved you before as I do now, when this has risen up to separate us forever.”