CHAPTER IV
Very frail and pathetic looked Nancy to the nurse who entered the room a little later. Beneath the frill of the little cap the girl wore to cover her shorn head, her dark eyes looked sadly out of proportion to the wan face with its milky white skin. Her little pointed chin was sharper, her nose with its sensitive nostrils more aquiline, her hands more transparent than before her illness. Mrs. Bertram's quick eye perceived that she looked tired. "Don't you think you'd better lie down, dear?" she asked.
"Not yet," returned Nancy. "There are so many things to think about."
"And can't you think lying down?" Mrs. Bertram smiled at her.
"Perhaps I can. Very well, I will lie down if you will sit by me. I shall not have you much longer and I want all I can have of you while I can get it."
"Please don't speak of sending me away. I want to see you well and rosy before I go," said Mrs. Bertram as she settled the cushions of the couch around her.
"I don't want to speak of it. I would like to keep you with me always, dear Mrs. Bertram. I can't tell you what it has meant to have a person like your dear self to help and comfort me, but I do not know yet how long I can afford such a luxury as you are."
"It has meant as much to me as to you," Mrs. Bertram answered earnestly, "and please, please don't speak again of the sordid money side of it. Such a sweet, peaceful haven as this is for a storm-tossed soul is not to be found every day, and I have learned to love my little patient almost too well, for it gives me a pang even to think of leaving her."
Nancy leaned over to lay her hand upon that of her nurse who was now seated in a low chair by her side. "Have you been unhappy, too?" she asked.
"I have been. I still am very unhappy at times. It is only when I lose myself in my work, only when I am caring for those who suffer, does my life seem at all worth living."
Nancy looked with deeper interest at the calm brow, the steady blue eyes, the sweet mouth, the fast-graying hair of the woman before her. "You are very brave," she said, "and very unselfish if you can forget your own troubles in doing for others. I am afraid I can never do that. It must be very, very hard not to dwell upon one's own griefs."
"It was hard at first, but one learns. To centre one's entire thoughts upon one's own sorrows that way madness lies. If we can not busy ourselves in some vital way we become worthless to ourselves and the world."
Nancy sighed. It would be hard to disengage her thoughts from her present sorrows, she considered, yet, for the second time that day she had been made to realize that life was a battle, and that one must not be a coward. One must look for defeats, for weariness of soul and body, for privations and sufferings, but one must not desert the ranks. "Would you mind telling me about the way you learned to be brave?" she said presently. "Would it hurt you to tell me of your sufferings? Were you very young when they came to you?"
"I was young—less than twenty-four—when the storm broke which threatened to destroy me. If it will help you I am ready to tell you, although I seldom speak of it now to anyone. Let me get my knitting first, for it is something of a long story."
She found her knitting and returned with it. Nancy lay back upon the pillows to listen. "If it will sadden you, please don't tell it," she said.
Mrs. Bertram smiled and shook her head. "Sometimes it is good discipline to be saddened," she said. "Many of us try to avoid anything that is not perfectly agreeable to see or to hear; that, too, is selfish. As our good Quaker friends say: it is borne in upon me to tell you. As you already know, I was born in a little town in Sussex, England, near the sea. My father was a clergyman. When I was seventeen he died and my mother and I were left with very small means to battle with the world. I had been carefully educated and a year later there came a chance for me to go to Mexico as governess in an English family. The pay was so good, the opportunity so unusual, that we decided it would be best for me to go. To leave my mother was a great grief to me; to lose me, her only child, was heartbreaking to her, but we made many plans and as the period of separation promised to be but two years we thought we must endure it. Well, I went, and all seemed as fair and promising as we had hoped. I was very young, only eighteen, and with little knowledge of the world."
"Only a year younger than I am," responded Nancy.
"Then you can understand the impression which would be made upon a young and romantic creature when she meets a man who answers to her girlish ideal, a man full of enthusiasm, ardent, imaginative, a musician, a writer, full of schemes which to him, and to so young a girl, appeared such as would work wonders in this sorry world. I was fairly carried off my feet, swept along by the current of his passion. His lovemaking was such as one reads of, but which does not always bring the happiest issues, yet to me a man so eager, so enthusiastic, so full of sentimentality could not fail to seem wonderful. That I, a simple girl, should be wakened by a serenader in picturesque cloak who sang fervid love songs under my window, who would tell me that night after night he watched in the shadows till my light went out; whom I saw waiting below to behold my face when I drew my curtain in the early morning, was nothing less than ideal. Of course all these things made their appeal as they have done a thousand times to a thousand other foolish maids. He questioned me about my home, my family. Did I have another lover? Was he the first? Had I left anyone in England whom I had reason to think might care for me? I had to confess that there was one who had liked me well enough to beg me to remain as his wife, but that I had not thought of him in any such relation, that he was only a poor curate, and that my mother was my first thought. Of this possible admirer he was madly jealous and seemed to think if I did not consent to an immediate marriage that he might lose me. So at last I yielded to the intensity of his persuasions and one night I slipped away secretly and married him, a man I knew scarcely more about than I have told you. The good people whom I left so abruptly were naturally furiously indignant, and I lost a friendship which might have served me well in later days if I had not been so foolishly precipitate."
"But it must have been an ideal love," murmured Nancy.
"It seemed so to me then, and it was for the time being. We were deliriously happy for a year, then my little son came and my husband began to resent my devotion to the child, although he adored him, for none loves and considers his children more than a Spaniard."
"He was a Spaniard? You didn't tell me that," remarked Nancy, who was intensely interested in the story.
"Yes, he was a Spaniard living in Mexico. He came to that country when he was about eighteen, from northern Spain. There was much that was fine about him, but his too impossible ideals led him into difficulties. After the baby's birth he absented himself from home very often to plot with others against the government. Perhaps he was right, perhaps wrong; I do not know. He wrote flaming articles which, in many cases, were published outside of Mexico. He helped to lay underhand schemes for the overthrow of the authorities then in power. These things did not bring him much in the way of money, but he had pupils, English or Americans, who wished to learn the pure Castilian rather than the cruder speech frequently spoken in Mexico. So we managed to get along. He would come home moody, depressed, or in a rage against those whom he called his enemies, yet always he was devoted to me and the child, only that smouldering fire of jealousy, that lack of faith, that unworthy suspicion was ready to burst into flame at a moment's provocation. I could never mention a return to England without bringing forth a tirade. I was tired of him. He could bring me no happiness. I wanted a lover of my own people, he would declare. He was a doting, mistaken imbecile to think I could continue to be true to him. Then he would regret his wild words, say that he would turn his attention to making more money, would give up his intriguing friends, and we would send for my mother and we would all be happy together. There came another baby, a little girl. Such darling children they were." Mrs. Bertram paused. Her eyes had a faraway look, and her knitting lay untouched upon her lap. Nancy, absorbed and excited, did not dare to interrupt by asking where these children were at the present time, although she longed to know.
Presently Mrs. Bertram took up her needles again. "My little girl was two years old," she went on, "when a message came that my mother was dangerously ill, and probably could not live long. She begged me to come to her. Could I do so? The message was sent by the young curate who was devoted to her. My husband was away. I made every effort to reach him but without avail. I had but little money, yet I felt I must go at all hazards. My precious, patient mother! Nothing at that moment seemed so important as the granting of her wish. I calculated that I could make the trip, spend a little time with her and return within six weeks or two months at the furthest. I hesitated about leaving the children, but they had a faithful, devoted nurse, and I knew that my husband would be inconsolable if I took them with me, so, hard as it was, I made up my mind to leave them. I borrowed the money, received the promise of my nearest neighbors to look in once in a while upon the children and then I started off, praying that I might reach my mother in time."
"And did you?" asked Nancy eagerly.
"Yes, and my coming was such a joy to her that sometimes I have let that thought compensate for all the trouble that came after. When I saw her I realized how cruel I had been to sacrifice her to my own desires. How could I have left her? How could I have married so precipitately? Why did I not wait? Well, dear, when one is young one does many foolish things, yet who can expect level judgment from young, inexperienced persons? If they do nothing to bring lifelong regrets I suppose it is the best that can be expected of them. Pray Heaven you may never do such."
"Oh, but I have, I have done just that," murmured Nancy. "But never mind, please go on, Mrs. Bertram, I never heard such an exciting story. Did you go back, and—and?"
"I went back as soon as I could, though not as soon as I expected, for after my dear mother's death there were necessary things to be attended to, but I wrote very, very often to my husband, and never received a word in reply. During the first weeks I had one or two post-cards from a neighbor to say the children were well, but after that nothing. I knew that my husband's insane jealousy had probably led him to believe that I had made my mother's illness an excuse to leave him. The message I received I had enclosed in a note which I left for him, in my anxiety forgetting that the name signed was Ernest Kirkby, the curate's."
"Oh, dear, oh, dear, but it was unfortunate under the circumstances," exclaimed Nancy.
"Terribly so, for I believe it was that which did the mischief. Well, at last I returned to the little city where we had lived, only to find my husband and children gone, none could tell me where. Poor, unhappy boy, he was not so much to blame. His plottings with revolutionists brought suspicion upon him. He was a marked man, and one night his friends hustled him on board a ship about to sail for Cuba, in order to prevent his arrest, perhaps his assassination, for it was that way, rather than another, that they were doing things in Mexico at that time. A number of his fellow-plotters did meet death by stealthy means; others fled the country, so there were few to give me any news of my husband. At last I learned where he had gone, was told he had taken the children and the nurse with him, and had left the town where we had lived, this shortly after my departure, about the time the post cards from our neighbor ceased to come. This kind neighbor, supposing I was in communication with my husband, and having nothing more to report about the children, had not troubled to write again. After learning that he sailed for Cuba I went there, and in time found that he had gone to the United States. It is a large place, my dear, and I never found him nor my children. The last news I received was from a relative of his in Spain to whom I wrote as a last resort. I had a short reply which said that he was dead and that no information could be given about the children."
"Oh, me, what a grief!" cried Nancy. "Dear Mrs. Bertram, you are right, your sorrow is heavier than mine. How could you have borne it?"
"I had hope left. I have never given up hope. At first I felt that I could never forgive my husband for robbing me of my children, for his unjust and cruel suspicions, for his lack of faith in me. But, as time went on, I realized that I must have something to fill my heart and mind, and at the advice of my good physician I studied nursing. I was still young, and I knew I might have many years to live. There seemed but one way to atone for the sorrow I had brought to my mother, and that was to relieve the sufferings of others; but one way to forget my own griefs and that was to help others bear theirs."
"That is very noble, very wonderful," said Nancy thoughtfully, "I am afraid I could never rise to such heights as you have done."
Mrs. Bertram ignored this remark and said, "So now you see how I came by my profession. I have visited most of the large cities in this country, always hoping to discover some clue which would lead me to my children. I adopted the Anglicized version of my husband's name at the outset, because I feared he might discover me in my searchings, and in his resentment might spirit away the children before I could see him and explain."
"And what is the Spanish version of your name?" inquired Nancy.
"Beltrán. My husband's name was José Beltrán. In English Joseph Bertram."
"Beltrán! Beltrán!" Nancy sat up with a sharp cry, clasped her hands over her heart and gazed at the nurse with startled eyes. "There could not be two, could there? No, there could not. Wait!" She sprang from the couch with more energy than prudence and ran to a drawer, produced a key, then opened the old escritoire bringing back the letters which had so overcome her upon first reading them. These, scattered upon the floor Ira had carefully gathered together after Nancy had left them there, and had as carefully locked them up in the desk, putting the key where he knew it belonged.
The girl was so agitated when she returned to Mrs. Bertram that she could scarcely speak. She thrust the packet into the nurse's hands. "Read them! Read them!" she cried, then sank back against the pillows, to watch every expression of Mrs. Bertram's face.
First there was curiosity, then wonder, then agitation. The usually self-controlled woman leaned forward trembling. "Tell me, tell me," she said, in a tense voice, "where did you get these?"
"They were written to my adopted mother, Mrs. Virginia Loomis," answered Nancy, scarce above her breath.
"Your adopted mother!" cried Mrs. Bertram. "You are not actually the child of Mrs. Loomis? Oh, you must be; the doctor would have known. Oh, you must be."
"I am not," declared Nancy, sitting up and clasping her hands together. "I am not. Mr. Weed knows. Oh, I have been so unhappy. I have felt so alone since I found it out, but now—but now!"
Mrs. Bertram leaned back and pressed her hands against her eyes. "It is a dream," she murmured. "Oh, yes, it is a dream. I have dreams such as this." Then she steadied herself, grasping the arms of her chair and saying with assumed composure. "If you are an adopted daughter, if you are not Nancy Loomis, what is your true name?"
"It is Anita Beltrán," replied Nancy, tremulously. "I am your daughter. José Beltrán was my father. Mother! Mother! Love me, oh, please love me."
With a little moaning sound Mrs. Bertram gathered the girl into her arms and kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her hands, murmuring, "My baby, my little Nita, my baby girl. Oh, dear God I thank Thee! I thank Thee. My darling, oh, my darling! Let me hold you close. No, it is not a dream. My darling! My darling!"
Nestled in her mother's arms the girl sat, a feeling of great content stealing over her. "No more alone, no more alone," she whispered. "Now, I want to get well," she said at last, as she lifted her head.
Her mother held her off a little way. "Let me look at you, my precious," she said. "Why did I not see it before? You have your father's eyes, great, melting, brown eyes; you have my English skin, but for the rest you are a mixture, but why did I not know instinctively?"
"With this funny shaved head, and this cap how could you see any resemblance?" asked Nancy. "Have I a brother, too, do you think? I am sure I have. He is somewhere. I must hurry and get well, then we will go away together and look for him. What is his name?"
"He is little Joseph, Pepé, as they call it in Spain."
"Nancy is the diminutive of Anna, just as Anita is in Spanish. Hereafter I am Anita Beltrán, and we will go away together and find my brother Pepé."