“She would not know you, though she talks of you sometimes,” Miss Rossiter said, “and you must be careful not to excite her in the least.”
Edith promised to do whatever Miss Rossiter thought was proper.
“Only let me go to her at once,” she said. “You know I have not seen her in nineteen years, and she my own child, too.”
“Not seen her? What do you mean?” Miss Rossiter asked, a suspicion of Edith’s sanity crossing her mind.
“I mean I have not seen her, knowing she was my daughter,” Edith replied, as she followed to the room where Gertie lay so white and still, her bright hair tucked away beneath a silken net, a red fever spot on cheek and lips, and her hands folded upon her bosom just as she kept them for the most of the time while with Godfrey she went sailing over the golden sea to the country so far away.
She was on her journey thither when Edith came in, and, parting the curtains cautiously, stood looking at her, while in fancy she was a young girl again in the dreary room in Dorset Street, and the rain plashed against the windows, and ran down the panes in dirty streams, and the roar of the great city sounded in her ears, and she heard the lodgers’ steps upon the stairs, and her baby was in her arms, nestled so close to her that she felt the warm, tender flesh against her own, just as she felt that of the sick girl, whose face and neck, and hands she touched so carefully, and yet with such a world of love and tenderness, as she whispered to herself:
“Little girley, little baby, little Gertie, my very own little one, you are changed since that dreadful day so many years ago, but I know that you are mine. They took you from me when I was asleep, and now, when I see you again, I find you sleeping too. Darling little child, do you know it is your mother standing here and talking to you thus? Will you ever know, ever open your eyes on me and call me mother? Oh, Father in Heaven, spare her to me,—spare my precious child!” This was what the colonel heard Edith say; for, feeling anxious for her, he stood just outside the door, and when her voice ceased and he heard a rustling sound, he went in, and, supporting her with his arm as she sank into a chair, held her head upon his bosom, and soothed her tenderly.
It was strange the effect Edith’s presence in the sick-room had upon Miss Rossiter. She had fully indorsed Gertie,—ay, had in some sort adopted her in her own mind, and could not bear that another should share her watch and care and anxiety for the only sick person in whom she had ever been so deeply interested. But as soon as Edith’s tears were dried, and she was herself again, the calm, quiet dignity of the mother asserted itself, and Miss Rossiter, who was not the mother, was compelled to stand aside while another took her place and did the thousand little things which only a mother could have thought to do.
And Edith did not grow tired with constant watching. On the contrary, both strength and flesh came back to her, and, when at last the fever turned, and she knew her child would live, she gained faster than Gertie, and it seemed to the colonel that she grew young and fair and smooth each day until it was very hard to believe her the mother of the sick girl, who, with the marks of disease upon her face, looked her nineteen years.
The sea was not so placid now, the boat was tossing on the waves, and Gertie sat alone on deck, and called in vain for Godfrey, who had deserted his post and was nowhere to be found, until one morning, when he came bodily, the wreck of his former self, and climbing the stairs to Gertie’s room, bent over her with words of love which penetrated to her dull ear, and must in part have been comprehended.