CHAPTER IIITremulous Beginnings
Itwas a whole fortnight before Bertha was able to leave her bed and creep about the little drab-painted house again. An anxious fortnight it was for the two elder sisters, who had their own work to do and to nurse Bertha in between whiles. Sometimes Bertha was conscious and sometimes she was not, but always, always, whether sensible or insensible, there was pressing upon her the shadow of a deep disgrace. She had set her hand to do a brave thing, moved thereto by the feeling that she could not stand by and see a fellow creature die whom she might have saved. But the price she had to pay for having saved him was that she herself had to be the most awful nuisance to her two sisters, who worked so hard and had the living to earn.
A little while ago this would hardly have troubled her at all. But now, just as her eyes had been opened to her own very serious shortcomings, and she had made up her mind to set about a wholesale reformation of herself without delay, it was nothing short of tragic that she should have been taken ill. It did not even comfort her to remember that but for that act of daring, which had taken her so completely out of herself, she might still have gone on in the old aimless fashion, remaining futile and incapable to the end of the chapter.
The worry of it was likely to retard her recovery. It seemed to her, in the new mood which had taken possession of her, that she could never do enough to repay her sisters for the nights of broken sleep and the days of worry and hard work which they endured on her account. Then a grain of common sense came to her rescue, and she remembered that the sooner she was well and able to take up her accustomed duties, the sooner they would be able to get some rest and relaxation.
When she arrived at this wholesome state of mind, convalescence set in steadily, and in a very short time she was creeping about the house, making pathetic attempts to be useful, when both Anne and Hilda would much rather that she would sit still and get a little stronger.
They were very kind to her, and never once in those two anxious weeks did she hear one word of complaint from either of them because of the hardness of their lives. There was a difference, too, in their manner of treating her. Bertha thought at first it was a sort of respect such as they might show to one who was their equal at last, and no longer a child to be chidden for indolent ways and careless habits. But as the days went by it began to dawn upon her that the manner of both was tinged with pity—just unmistakable pity!
This first irritated and then frightened her. Did they think she was going into a decline, she wondered? And although she had written yards of feeble poetry about the joys of dying young, the mere prospect of such a thing occurring put her into such a condition of fume, that she made quite extraordinary efforts at getting better, and succeeded even beyond her expectations.
Then Hilda was able to go her long-distance journeys again, and Anne went off to school, and stayed away the whole morning without running back between classes to see how it fared with the invalid.
The first morning that this happened was a cold grey day, when there was a feeling of snow in the air, and Bertha was ordered to take life as easily as possible, and not to burden herself with any duties beyond keeping the fire in. But Bertha had her own ideas on the subject of what she was going to do, and prepared to carry them out to the best of her ability.
There had been no proper meals cooked since she had been ill. Broth, beef tea, and gruel had been prepared for her as she had needed, or the things had been offerings from kindly neighbours as hard-working as the two Miss Doynes, and the girls had just lived on bread and butter, because they lacked the time to do any cooking for themselves. But this sort of thing was coming to an end now, so Bertha told herself with great decision, as she got up out of the rocking chair as soon as Anne had passed out of sight on her way to school.
“I am going to be useful somehow, or perish in the attempt,” she said to herself, with a laugh which somehow ended in a sob. She was so weak still, and everything demanded such a desperate effort to accomplish. But she was thinking of that night when she was first taken ill, and Anne had knelt sobbing beside her bed. Somehow Bertha just hated to think of that night, and she hated to remember the words which her sister had uttered. Indeed, she had tried her very best to forget them, but it seemed as if the more she tried the more vividly they came back to her. There was an uneasy feeling in her heart that somehow, that had been a day of fate in more senses than one. Sometimes she wondered if her sister’s sobbing words had had anything to do with the visit of Roger Mortimer; but she had dismissed the idea as ridiculous, for she had not seen him since, and she had never once heard Anne mention him since, except yesterday, when she herself had asked Anne when he was coming to see them again, and Anne had replied that he was away in Halifax just now, but that he might return next week or the week after.
Anne had gone on to speak of other things immediately, as if the subject of Mr. Mortimer were not interesting enough for discussion. But she had blushed in a vivid and glorious fashion right up to the roots of her hair, and it was the memory of that blush which worried Bertha so much as she moved feebly about, cooking the early dinner.
Oh, how truly awful it would be if one of them were to fall in love and get married just now, when she so badly wanted to show them what a good sister she could be! Indeed, the thought was so much too bad to be borne, that she put it from her, resolved to think no more about it, but to confine herself entirely to the business in hand.
When the cooking was well under way, she set about tidying up the sitting-room, which had to be kitchen, dining-room, and drawing-room combined. The house did really boast two sitting-rooms, but the second one had been taken by Anne for a bedroom. For it seemed so much more desirable to the three girls to have a room each for their private use than to be crowded together at night, to have the doubtful advantage of another sitting-room for use in the day.
Very tired was Bertha when she had done, in fact she had to stop far short of her intentions in the matter of tidying, because her strength gave out so much before her energy. But at least it was a beginning, and she sat down for a brief half-hour of rest before Anne came home, feeling as if her feet were set at last on the steep ladder which had to be climbed to capability and usefulness. It was then, as she sat resting, that she thought of her own room, and the awful confusion awaiting her there.
“I will start on clearing it up when Anne has gone back to school this afternoon,” she said to herself, as she crouched by the stove. The house was very quiet, but outside there was constant sound and commotion, as long streams of migratory birds passed overhead on their way from the cold, rock-bound shores of Labrador and the land round Baffin’s Bay. They were bound for the warm and sunny south, and the air echoed with the plaintive “hawnk, honk” of the geese as they flew in single streams or wedge-like masses.
So quiet was the house, and Bertha was so very tired, that presently she fell asleep, and was still dozing when Anne came in, all blown about, and sweetly fresh with autumn winds and raindrops, for the weather was getting more stormy as the day wore on.
“Oh, Bertha, why did you trouble to cook?” cried Anne, with a little dismay in her tone. The savoury smells resulting from Bertha’s labours were filling the house, and saluted her as she burst in at the door, hungry and tired with her long morning of work in the school.
“It was not any trouble,” said Bertha, starting up and rubbing her eyes with much the same guilty feeling which came to her, when she overslept herself in the mornings, “and it is so long since you have had anything better than roast potatoes and butter for your dinner.”
“Roast potatoes and butter are not to be despised, I can tell you,” laughed Anne, as she sat down at the table to enjoy the unwonted luxury of being waited upon; “but a real stew properly made is something of a luxury, I can assure you.”
What was there in those words to make Bertha wince as if someone had struck her a blow? There would have been nothing, less than nothing, but for that awakened conscience of hers, which reminded her of the many times her sisters had had to sit down to badly prepared and insufficient meals, just because she had been too indolent to bestir herself for the cooking.
“I am sorry it storms so. Hilda will have quite a dreadful journey across to the Sudeleys,” she said presently, as she sat watching Anne, getting a lot of enjoyment out of her sister’s zest for the meal, but eating very little herself.
“Hilda won’t mind that, I fancy,” laughed Anne. “Mrs. Nelson is to be at the Sudeleys to-day, and Hilda is very keen on meeting her, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. I do not believe that I have ever heard of her before. Who is she? The mother of a likely pupil?” asked Bertha, with no lack of interest now; for another pupil, of course, meant more money, and where the means are so straitened every little sum becomes of vital importance.
Anne laughed. “Of course you do not know. I keep forgetting that you have been out of everything for the last fortnight. But we had to keep you as quiet as possible, because you would go off your head every minute that you got a chance for doing it. But when Hilda comes home to-morrow she will tell you herself all about her hopes and fears, and what her chances are. Now I am going to make haste and wash the dishes, because I must be back at school very early this afternoon.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” said Bertha, giving her a gentle push back into the chair from which she had just risen. “You will sit down and read a book, or go to sleep, or do what you like for as long as it would take you to wash the dishes, then when you have gone I will wash the dishes myself, if you please.”
“Are you going to develop into a domestic tyrant?” asked Anne, with a laugh, as she went over to the rocking chair by the stove and sat gently swaying to and fro, very much at ease.
“I can’t say what I may develop into,” replied Bertha, with a shake of her head, and then, with a great shrinking upon her, she was just going to confide in Anne something of the purposes and resolves that were stirring in her heart, when there was a knock at the door, and a shock-headed boy very much out of breath with running appeared on the threshold, saying that one of the children had burned herself at the school stove, and would teacher please come at once.
Of course Anne had to rush away in a great hurry then, and Bertha’s chance was gone for the time. When the dishes were washed and put away, Bertha turned her steps to her little bedroom, which had scarcely been entered since she was taken sick. At least she could take a look round and decide where to begin the work of clearing up to-morrow.
The window was shut, and the room had a close, musty feeling. Her first move would have been to the window to fling it wide open, but for the moment she could not get there; for a chair laden with papers and clothes had somehow been upset in the middle of the open space, and she had to pick them up and sort them over before she could get across the floor to the window. Naturally she paused to read some of the lines written on those fluttering sheets of paper, and she winced again to think that she could ever have written such mawkish rubbish.
“Oh dear, and it was only two weeks ago; why, it might have been two years!” she exclaimed, as she gathered up the sheets and laid them aside. It was strange how that swim to the Shark’s Teeth had altered her outlook. She had gone to save a man’s life because there was nobody else to do it. But it was her own self that she had discovered when she performed her little act of courage and daring.
The wet garments she had shed in such a hurry, when she came home to get supper for Anne, still lay in a heap in the corner just as she had cast them off, and she lifted them up with a rueful air. One’s clothes are never improved by lying for a whole fortnight in a wet heap on a dusty bedroom floor. But no one was to be blamed—the two elder girls had far too much to do to be able to think of anything outside, and she herself had been too ill to remember. She shook the garments out one by one and hung them from pegs on the wall, meaning to take them out to the other room and dry them one by one at the stove. But the last garment of all puzzled her not a little, for it was a man’s coat of a very roomy description.
“Why, how did that get here?” she exclaimed, and then suddenly remembered that the man whom she had gone to save had dragged a coat out from under the seat of his boat, and had told her to wrap herself in it because she shivered so.
“And of course I came home in it. I remember now how it flapped about as I ran. But I wonder that he did not come for it, or ask Mrs. Saunders to get it for him,” she said, as she picked the water-logged garment up from the floor and shook it out.
Something dropped on to the floor with a thud, and she laid the coat over a chair while she went painfully down on her knees to pick it up. Those two weeks had been so full of rheumatism and similar afflictions, that moving from one position to another still took some time, and also entailed something in the way of endurance. The something was a little morocco case bound with silver at the corners, and looking very much as if it were intended for cigars. There was a spring at one side, and Bertha pressed it to see if the case would open. She had her full share of curiosity, and the little case seemed very heavy. “Perhaps it is money,” she said to herself, with a little shiver of dread; for she was wondering what the stranger must think of her, if it were indeed money that made the case so heavy.
“He might even think that I had found it, and meant to keep it!” she muttered, as she wrestled with the spring, which was rather hard to move.
Presently it flew open with a jerk, and she saw to her relief that it contained not money, but twelve dull grey stones of slightly varying sizes. Pebbles they looked like, and her first thought was that they were geological specimens. Perhaps the man was a scientist, stones being his particular ology.
“He might even have been looking for stones of sorts when he got into such a dangerous place,” she muttered, and for ten minutes or so she tried to make herself believe that these dull grey pebbles were just specimens and nothing more.
But at the end of that time she had thrust the little case right at the back of her one lock-up drawer, and turning the key upon them she went out to the other room, which was warm and pleasant from the glow of the stove. Marching straight to the bookcase, she hunted until she found a little dictionary of common things which belonged to Anne, and turning the pages over hastily she hunted up “Diamonds”.
“Colourless or dull grey stones of exceeding hardness,” she read aloud, and a look of care and perplexity dropped on to her face. If those stones in the case were uncut diamonds, why was the man carrying them in the pocket of his loose outer coat? and why, oh why, had he not sent to enquire for that same coat?
CHAPTER IVA Series of Shocks
A fitof shivering seized Bertha. Of course she was weak and unstrung still, or the incident would not have struck her as being of such magnitude. As it was, she felt as if she were up against the greatest trouble of her life. Was the man a thief? Had he stolen the diamonds, and so when he lost them was afraid to make enquiries about them through fear of being found out? But that seemed hardly probable, because, of course, he might have come to enquire for his coat. The question which troubled her most was whether he would think that she was a thief. Indeed, her fertile imagination immediately sketched a pretty but wholly improbable piece of fiction, as to how the man had missed his diamonds, but would not enquire for them, being willing to sit down under the loss because she had saved his life.
“Oh dear, oh dear, what shocking nonsense, and I don’t even know that they are diamonds!” she exclaimed, putting the book back into the bookcase, and turning her attention resolutely from the affair because it worried her so.
To-morrow she would go as far as the little house where Jan Saunders lived, and ask for the address of the man she had helped. Then she would send him a letter, telling him what she had found, and ask him to fetch his property or tell her how to send it to him, and so she would be quit of this tiresome responsibility.
That evening was full of petty worries. Anne came home from school very late, because she had been out to a farm which lay far back in the woods, to take home the little girl who had burned herself in the dinner hour. And when she did get home she was most dreadfully depressed, for the mother of the child, instead of being decently grateful for the care and kindness bestowed upon the little girl, chose to consider herself aggrieved, because the children were left to themselves in the noon spell.
“She said that I was paid to look after them, and I ought never to leave them. Just fancy what a hateful time I should have of it if I had to stay in that pokey, horrible schoolhouse for the dinner hour!” said Anne, with more heat than she usually displayed; for she was blessed with an evenly balanced temperament, and was not easily ruffled.
“But no one would expect you to stay, would they?” asked Bertha, opening her eyes very wide. “No reasonable person, I mean.”
“School committee-men are not always the most reasonable of creatures, and as Mrs. Scott declares that she will lodge a formal complaint and ask that the teacher be requested to stay at the school for the noon spell, it is quite probable that I may find myself with a little extra duty tacked on to what I already have,” replied Anne, with a short laugh that had very little mirth in it.
“If it comes to that, I will take the noon-spell duty for you. The committee won’t be particular who it is, provided there is some responsible person there,” said Bertha, with intent to console.
“My dear, you could not manage that rabble,” said Anne impatiently. “They would be quite equal to turning you out of the school and locking the door upon you if you chanced to offend them, or they might take the other course of locking you in. It takes every bit of will power that I possess to master them, I can tell you, and I was born to rule, which you never were.”
“No, I’m afraid I wasn’t,” admitted Bertha meekly, but she felt keenly mortified notwithstanding, because Anne had not seemed more grateful for her offer of help.
Even her request to help in the preparation of the needlework for the class next day met with a refusal, for Anne was irritated with her reception from Mrs. Scott, and she was not sufficiently alert to see how much Bertha wanted to be of service.
So the evening, which might have been so restful and pleasant, was spoiled for both of them, and they were thankful when bedtime came.
“I shall go back to my own room to-morrow, and then you can have your bed to yourself again,” said Bertha, as the two prepared for slumber.
“Yes, that will be better, now that you are quite well again,” Anne answered, in an absent-minded fashion. And she was so silent and absorbed that Bertha chafed in miserable discomfort, wishing she had put her own room straight and aired the bed to-day, then Anne could have had her own room free from disturbance. With this sort of mood upon her, it was not wonderful that Bertha said nothing of what she had found in the pocket of that wonderfully roomy overcoat. Anne might be angry because the coat had been forgotten so long, or she might feel hurt because of the appearance of neglect on her part, in not having hunted round Bertha’s little bedroom to find the wet garments which had lain unheeded so long.
Next morning the sun shone, and although the wind was keen with the breath of coming winter, the air was so pleasant that everything looked easier. Even the prospect of having to stay in school for the noon spell was not so dreadful as it had seemed last night, and Anne set off for her day of work in quite good spirits, just her own serene self, with all the petulance of the previous night quite gone.
Then Bertha brought the coat to the fire, and, drying it carefully, folded it into a neat parcel ready for sending away. When this was done she put on her hat and coat, and, taking a stick, because she felt so waggly on her feet, she set out for the little cottage where Jan Saunders lived. But she did not take the coat with her, for she knew very well that, being a useful garment, it would probably get no farther, as Mrs. Saunders had very stretchable ideas on the rights of property.
Oh, it was good to be out again, even though her feet were not all they should be in the matter of steadiness, and Bertha walked slowly along Mestlebury Main Street, noting all the differences which had come over the face of the gardens and orchards during the time in which she had been shut up in the house.
Mrs. Saunders was out on the cliff as usual, and as usual she was doing nothing but gaze out to sea, while old Jan smoked a pipe in calm content at her side. They both fell upon Bertha with a greeting that was fairly rapturous, and the old woman, with a tear in her bleared old eye, said fervently, “My dear, my dear, you look that delicate that a puff of wind might blow you away!”
“It would have to be a very strong puff—something that was first cousin to a whirlwind or a tornado, I fancy,” replied Bertha, with a laugh, and then she turned to Jan, who might be trusted to tell the truth if he knew it.
“Can you tell me where the man lives whose boat got stuck on the Shark’s Teeth?” she asked.
“Furrin parts somewhere, ain’t it, Mother?” asked the old man, taking his pipe from his mouth and looking across at his wife.
Mrs. Saunders pursed up her mouth in a disapproving pucker and slowly shook her head. “He said something about Peru, but it might have been Australia, or somewhere round that way. Anyhow, he was in a mighty hurry to be off again that night, when we had pulled him out of the water and dried him up so beautiful. Downright ungrateful I called it, for I had arranged for him to sleep with Herr Schmudcht, and I had lent a pair of nearly clean sheets to put on the bed, and then the gentleman would not stay, and Herr Schmudcht has slept in those sheets ever since, so now I expect they will want washing before ever I can lend them to anyone else; it is really downright vexing, so it is,” and Mrs. Saunders heaved a windy sigh over her misplaced kindness, which was meeting such a poor return, but Bertha burst out laughing.
“I should insist on Herr Schmudcht washing the sheets himself; I am sure that he is stronger than you are,” she said, and then becoming suddenly grave, she asked again, and this time with a ring of real anxiety in her tone, “But where did the man go to on that night when he left here, and what was his name?”
“My dear, he wasn’t a man, he was a gentleman,” said Mrs. Saunders, with quite crushing emphasis, and then she went on, “It wasn’t for us to be asking him all sorts of personal questions. I never was one for poking into business what did not concern me, I am thankful to say.”
“But you surely must know something about him; and I want to write to him,” said Bertha impatiently, and then she was surprised to see a flicker of fear in the old woman’s blear eyes.
“Well, I guess that the writing will have to wait a bit. Perhaps he will happen along this way again some day, and then you can say what you want to—a much better fashion than putting things in black and white, so that they can be sweared to in a court of justice,” said Mrs. Saunders, with a toss of her head, and not another bit of information could Bertha get out of her.
“I shall have to ask the girls what I had better do,” she said to herself, as she went slowly back to her home to start on her belated morning’s work.
Even that short walk had tired her so much, that it needed the entire stock of her lately acquired resolution to keep from sitting down and letting things go anyhow. But by a great effort she stuck to her task, and was all ready for Anne, who came rushing home about a quarter past twelve, snatched a hasty meal, and rushed back again, uneasy all the time lest her turbulent charges should get up to serious mischief in her absence.
Then Bertha was left with the long afternoon before her, for Hilda could not be home much before six o’clock. However, there was the house to put tidy, and the work she could not accomplish in the morning was cleared out of the way in the afternoon, and she found herself with an hour of rest before the girls came home.
She was tremendously proud of the tidy rooms, and she kept walking backwards and forwards admiring her handiwork, until some undarned stockings poking from an over-full drawer in Hilda’s room suggested a fresh outlet for her new-found energy, and taking them out to the kitchen, she sat down by the stove and began to darn them. It was the work that she hated most of all, so the voluntary doing of it was the most real self-sacrifice that she could have shown. However, Hilda had been forced to do all sorts of things for her when she was ill, and so it was up to her to make what amends were in her power. Anne was in, and supper was ready, when Hilda came back from Paston, rushing into the house like a whirlwind, and shouting in great excitement—
“Girls! girls! I have got some of the most wonderful news for you. What do you think is going to happen?”
“How should we know?” cried Anne, standing erect and staring at Hilda in amazement; for the second sister usually hugged her dignity too closely for exhibitions like these.
“I am going to Europe!” cried Hilda, stopping in the middle of the floor, and dropping the words out one by one with tremendous emphasis and solemnity.
“You are going to Europe—when?” cried Anne, who was the first to recover the power of speech, while Bertha caught at a chair to steady herself, because the room would keep swinging round at such a rate.
“We start next month, just four weeks to-day. I am to take Mrs. Nelson’s two daughters to Germany for a year. Oh, Anne, Anne, don’t say that I can’t go! It is the chance of my life; I can never hope to get such another opportunity,” said Hilda, casting herself upon her elder sister and hugging her frantically, as if to squeeze a consent out of her in that way.
“It is not for me to say that you may not take a chance when it comes,” said Anne, turning suddenly pale, as pale as Bertha, who still clung trembling to the chair. “Especially I could not say anything to you now, when I have just decided to take my own chance of an easier life. Only it does seem hard for poor Bertha that we should both be going away at the same time.”
“I was afraid you would say that,” said Hilda; and now there was a mutinous look on her face. “But why, oh why, should I have to lose my chance in life because of Bertha? She can surely be boarded out somewhere for a year; I can spare a part of my salary to help pay for it, and we can sell this furniture. Oh, let us be willing to make any sacrifice to meet an emergency like this. I did not venture to put one straw of protest in your way, Anne, when you said that Mr. Mortimer wanted to marry you, so it is hardly fair that you should begrudge me my chance, now that it has come to me.”
“My dear, I do not grudge it to you,” said Anne, with keen distress on her beautiful face. “I was only thinking of poor Bertha, and how hard it would be for her.”
“What is it all about?” asked Bertha, finding her tongue for the first time; but speaking with horrible difficulty, because her heart was beating so fast. “Are you going to marry Mr. Mortimer, Anne? And when?”
Anne came closer, and put her arms round Bertha’s trembling figure, holding her sister in a tight embrace.
“Bertha, darling, I would have told you before, only you have been so ill, and I did not like to worry you until you were quite strong. Mr. Mortimer came all the way from Australia to ask me to marry him, and I said yes, for I was so tired of this awful driving life; but I have been afraid ever since that I put my own happiness and comfort before your welfare, and it has seemed so dreadfully selfish of me. This is why I flew out at Hilda just now.”
“There is no need to worry about me,” said Bertha, in a dazed sort of tone, “only it has all come so suddenly, that I do not seem able to take it in.”
“Of course it looks like trouble to begin with,” burst in Hilda, and her voice was just a wee bit patronizing, or so poor Bertha, in her new sensitiveness, judged it to be. “But next year, when I come back from Europe, as Mrs. Nelson says, I shall be able to charge almost what I like for lessons, and then we can set up house together.”
“Here in Mestlebury?” asked Bertha, not because she particularly wanted to know, but because she must say something, just to keep herself from sobbing like a baby.
“I should sincerely hope not,” laughed Hilda. “I would have left this out-of-the-way corner of the country ever so long ago if it had depended upon me only. But there was Anne’s school to be considered. We could not afford to keep this house on if I lived in lodgings, and so I have had to put up with it, and fearfully wearing work it has been. Think of the miles I have had to travel to earn a dollar, and all the fag, and the wear and tear of my life. Oh, no more of Mestlebury for me, thank you, not when once Anne is married.”
“Where will you live, when—when you are married?” demanded Bertha sharply, as she faced round upon Anne. A sudden dread had assailed her that Anne would have to go right away, and the thought was unbearable.
Anne’s face fell. By instinct she guessed what was in the mind of Bertha, and it seemed such horrible cruelty to take one’s own happiness when it brought so much pain to the others, or at least to Bertha; for Hilda, with her own career in front of her, could not be expected to care so much about the parting.
“Dear, Roger has a big sheep run fifty miles from Adelaide, and that is where our home will be.”
Anne’s tone was low and soft; then, when she had finished, a deep hush fell on the group. Bertha stood white and rigid, like a figure carved in stone, and the other two were afraid to disturb her.
It was shock upon shock, blow upon blow, and it was small wonder that she was left, as it were, battered and breathless, trying to realize all that these changes would mean to her, yet, in spite of it, too dull and numbed with the pain to take it in.
CHAPTER VAgainst her Will
Itwas a week later, and the first snow had fallen, just a thin white coating on the hills and the plains, while the wind moaned with a new mournfulness through the forests of pine and of hemlock, stirring the fluttering pennons of black moss, as in the days when Evangeline’s people, the simple Acadian peasantry, tilled the land and lived upon the products of their industry. But the face of the countryside was changed since the driving forth of the village lovers to the long exile of separation and suffering. Where had stood the forest primeval, the ground was covered with fat orchards, with fruitful fields, and with bustling townships, which had “Progress” for their watchword.
Bertha had lived through the week in a kind of dream. Anne and Hilda discussed the various schemes they were making for her benefit, but at present she was too dazed to take much interest in them herself. It did not seem to matter in the least what became of her, and she found herself wishing sometimes that when she was ill she had been a little more ill, just enough to have carried her through the dark portal, and settled the question of her future once and for all. Of course this was very wrong. It was also very unnatural. But then Bertha at this time was scarcely normal, and so was to be forgiven and pitied, instead of being held up to censure or severe criticism.
Then at the end of the week the mail came in, bringing with it a letter which effectually settled the question of Bertha’s destiny, and that without any chance of appeal. The letter was from Cousin Grace, now Mrs. Ellis, who had been so good to the girls when their own mother died.
“So Anne is going to be married, and is to live in Australia. What a piece of luck for me! Now, girls, what you had better do is to break up your home, let Hilda take a teaching post in a school, where she will have a regular salary to fall back upon, and then I can have Bertha. Oh, you can’t think what it will mean to me to have someone that I can depend upon in the home! Life is really a terror sometimes with so many babies to look after, to clothe and feed, and only my one pair of hands to do it all.”
“So Anne is going to be married, and is to live in Australia. What a piece of luck for me! Now, girls, what you had better do is to break up your home, let Hilda take a teaching post in a school, where she will have a regular salary to fall back upon, and then I can have Bertha. Oh, you can’t think what it will mean to me to have someone that I can depend upon in the home! Life is really a terror sometimes with so many babies to look after, to clothe and feed, and only my one pair of hands to do it all.”
Anne read so much of the letter aloud, and then she stopped short, with a quiver of breakdown in her voice.
“Why, what a charming idea!” cried Hilda, looking up from a great heap of theory exercises through which she had been laboriously wading. “I wonder that it never occurred to either of us to ask Grace to take Bertha. Why, the arrangement will be perfectly ideal!”
Bertha, who was kneading a batch of bread at the table at the far end of the room, jerked up her head with a quick motion of protest, but before she could utter the words which rose to her lips, Anne, who was sitting back to her, began to speak—
“If I had asked Grace to take Bertha, I do not think that I should have felt so sure that it was the right thing to do. But seeing that the settlement of her future has been, as it were, taken right out of my hands and all arranged for me, I am sure that it must be right. With Grace, Bertha will be as safe as if she were with you or me, and she will be as kindly cared for. Oh, I am too thankful for words!”
“Poor old Anne!” muttered Hilda, and then, sweeping the pile of exercises on one side, she jumped up, and flinging her arms about Anne, she gave her a sounding kiss.
Bertha clenched her fists hard and punched the bread with quite unnecessary vigour, while she winked and winked to keep back the tears she was too proud to shed.
Oh, it hurt her! No one could even guess how it hurt her to think that her sisters had so much trouble to dispose of her. She knew that Hilda had asked Mrs. Sudeley to have her as a sort of mother’s help, but because she was not musical Mrs. Sudeley would have nothing to do with her. Bertha knew that she might have been musical if only she had tried hard enough. It was never any trouble to her to learn anything, but she had never worked at scales and exercises as Hilda had; indeed, she had never worked at anything, and now this was the price she had to pay, that when a home was needed for her no one wanted to be burdened with her.
Mrs. Sudeley’s refusal to have her had been a bitter mortification, although she had said no word about it. Once, nearly a year ago, she had paid a visit to the Sudeley homestead, and had been charmed with all the comfort, and even luxury, which the house contained. It was in most romantic country, too, and Bertha, who was always most strongly influenced by her surroundings, had been filled ever since with the longing to go there again. So it had not made her disappointment easier to bear to know that it was entirely her own fault that she could not teach elementary music and look after the piano practice of the elder children.
And now she would have to go thousands of miles away, right out on to the prairie, away from the sea, away from the forests, into a house crowded with little children, whose mother was overdone with work, and wanted someone to help her drudge through the monotonous, unlovely days!
“Bertha, Bertha, do you hear? Cousin Grace wants you to go and live with her. Do you think that you will like it?” called Anne, holding out her hand with the letter in it.
“It is very kind of Grace, but won’t it be a very expensive journey?” asked Bertha dubiously. She could not say outright that she simply hated the thought of going to Grace, and that if she had to be left with strangers she would much rather they were real strangers. Her memories of Grace were not very vivid, and Mr. Ellis she had only seen twice, and it was dreadful to think of being pitch-forked into a household and in a manner forced to remain there whether she liked it or not.
“Of course it will be an expensive journey,” replied Anne; “but, my dear, think of the comfort of it! Why, I shall be able to take my happiness now with a clear conscience, which so far I have not been able to do. Oh, Bertha, you do not know how bad I have felt about it!” and, to the surprise and dismay of both the girls, Anne, the brisk, brave, and capable, put her head down upon her hands and burst into a passion of tears.
In a moment Bertha had crossed the floor, and was sliding a pair of hands well caked with dough round her sister’s neck.
“Anne, dear Anne, don’t cry like this. Of course it is most awfully good of Cousin Grace to want me, and I expect that we shall get on most beautifully together,” said Bertha, making up her mind that in any case Anne would not be told about it, however unhappy she might be.
“Poor old Anne! you have been overdoing it lately,” put in Hilda, in a tone of pitying common sense, and it restored Anne to composure quicker than anything else could have done.
Somehow Hilda never could bear anything that even verged on emotional display, and Anne was careful not to upset her in this direction. Bertha was quite different; indeed she was a regular bundle of nerves and emotions, with a strong dash of sentimentality thrown in. And when later in that same day Hilda told her that once before Mr. Mortimer had written from Adelaide, asking Anne to marry him, and she had refused because of the two younger girls, for whom she must make a home, that little bit of confidence, joined to the sight of Anne’s breakdown, settled the future for Bertha without any hope of appeal. If her lot in the Ellis household were to be ever so hard or uncongenial, Anne must never know of it. There was something of the spirit of the martyr about Bertha, and she set herself to endure this hard thing which had come into her life with a Spartan disregard for pain.
But oh, the relentless heartache of those next few weeks! There were things in after-life which she could never see nor touch without it coming back to her in waves of pain and homesickness.
There was another letter from Grace, directly she heard of Hilda’s good fortune, and in this second epistle she gave all the necessary directions for Bertha’s journey westward, and with great generosity even enclosed the money to pay for her ticket through to the nearest railway station, which was thirty miles from the farm.
But she wanted Bertha to go at once, before the snow became so very deep. Sometimes in winter even sledges could not get through to the railway for weeks at the stretch, and it would be so very trying if Bertha were to be held upen routein this fashion. Moreover, if the home were to be broken up, there seemed to be no sense in delaying the upheaval.
“That is just what I think!” exclaimed Hilda, when she read the letter. “And if Bertha starts before I do, I can take her to Halifax and put her on the cars myself, then she will be all right until she gets to Winnipeg. I wish that Mr. Ellis could have met her there, but I suppose that is too much to expect. But anyhow, it will be a great relief to be able to start her on the journey myself.”
“Oh, I could manage somehow; I am not a baby, you see,” said Bertha, with a nervous laugh. As a matter of fact, she dreaded the journey horribly, but she was not going to upset Anne’s peace of mind if she could help it.
“It will be better for Bertha to go before the sale of the furniture. Let me see, that is next Wednesday; then Bertha had better go on Tuesday,” said Anne, who was up to her eyes in work of all sorts, arranging for the break-up of the only home they had ever known, making plans for her wedding, which was to take place almost directly; for Mr. Mortimer, having waited so long, was not disposed to wait any longer.
“But that will mean that I shall have to go before you are married,” said Bertha, with a note of protest in her tone.
“It cannot be helped, dear, and, after all, you will be spared a little more sadness,” Anne replied gently. “Weddings are harrowing things at the best of times, and mine must be sadder than ordinary, since it means so much parting for us all.”
Bertha turned away. Of course it was best that she should go away before Anne was married. But it was just horrible, like everything else. And because no one wanted her in the house just then, she thrust her arms into her coat, and, dragging her hat on, she set out through the snow to that part of the shore where the road from Paston came out on to the rocks.
She had only been there once since that day when she swam out to the rescue of the man, who had gone away without saying thank you, or even claiming the coat which was his. The thought of the coat came into her head now as she plunged along the snowy road, where the drifts were not yet packed hard enough to make walking a very pleasant exercise.
Of choice, she would have sent, or taken, the coat along to old Jan Saunders, and had no more responsibility in the matter. But she knew that it would not do to trust Mrs. Saunders even with the coat, and, of course, there was the morocco case with those grubby-looking pebbles which might be diamonds, or might be only the commonest stones of the roadside for aught she knew.
Oh no, it would never do to let Mrs. Saunders know anything about that case. Indeed, Bertha did not feel inclined to trust her in the matter of the coat either, so she had decided that the best thing that she could do would be to give the old people her address, and then they could write to her if the man wrote to them, or even came to interview them on the subject of his missing property.
A moaning wind swept round the headland, and Bertha shivered, for it was as if the wind were voicing her lament at leaving the sea and the rocks and the trees, with all the other beautiful things to which she had been accustomed all her life.
“Oh, I cannot bear it, I cannot!” she muttered between her set teeth; yet she knew all the time that she would have to bear it, and many a hard thing besides, since to bear and to endure is the lot of the human family.
“But I will come back some day. I will not stay all my life buried away on the prairie,” she said, as she turned from the sea towards the little house where old Jan Saunders lived.
It was the woman who opened the door to her to-day, and the old creature said that Jan was ill in bed, and that he had just fallen into a quiet sleep—the first rest that he had had for two days and nights.
“Then, of course, you must not disturb him on my account,” said Bertha, although she would much rather have done her errand to the old man, who at least meant to be honest.
“It would be a sin and a shame to disturb him, missie,” said the old woman. “But if you will tell me what it is that you wanted to see him for, I can let him know when he wakes up.”
“I am going away from Mestlebury, and my home now will be a long way off in the west, and so I thought that I had better bring you my new address, so that you might write to me if you hear anything of the man whose boat we pulled off the Shark’s Teeth. I must write to him as soon as I can, as I have something of his which I want to give back to him,” said Bertha, and then she produced a stamped and addressed envelope, which she gave to Mrs. Saunders.
“Something belonging to the gentleman? Now—why didn’t you say so when you was here before?” asked the old woman in a whining tone, as she shook her head disapprovingly.
“But it would have been no use if I had,” replied Bertha, with a laugh. “Don’t you remember that you told me you did not know who he was or where he had gone?”
“Still, I might have found out,” objected the old woman.
“Just so. And it is because I want you to find out now that I have told you this. Of course, I cannot make any promises for another person, but I should not be at all surprised if the man were to give you some small reward, if you could put me in communication with him,” said Bertha, hoping to raise the old woman’s curiosity, and to stimulate her endeavours by this suggestion of profit to be gained.
But again there was a look of something like dread on the face of Mrs. Saunders, and although she promised to do what she could towards the furthering of Bertha’s wishes, there did not appear much prospect of ultimate success in that direction.
Bertha was turning her steps homeward again, feeling that she had not achieved much beyond a little extra heartache by her outing, when, as she was passing the little store kept by the fat German, she heard her name called, and, looking round, she saw him beckoning to her to come nearer.
For a moment she hesitated, half-disposed to go on her way without heeding a summons of such a sort. But reflecting that his manners were, after all, made in Germany, and hence their limitations, she crossed over the patch of trodden snow to the door of the little store and asked the fat man, what it was that he wished to say to her.
“Ach, himmel, it is the bad manners of me to call you so, but it is the bad foot on me which will let me only stand and not walk,” said the German, pointing downward to a bandaged foot, whereupon Bertha promptly forgave him for the lack of courtesy that he had displayed.
“You have a bad foot? I am very sorry,” she said gravely.
“It has been bad, very bad, ever since the day when the stranger’s boat got stuck on the Shark’s Teeth,” explained the fat man, puffing and snorting and spreading his pudgy hands out as if his feelings were too much for him, and then, suddenly leaning forward, he asked, in a confidential whisper: “Has the old woman given you your share yet?”
“What do you mean?” asked Bertha, drawing herself up with an offended air.
“The man we saved left money with the old woman to be given to you. I heard him say so myself. He thought that you were poor, and he sent the money to you with his best thanks. Has she given it to you?” said the German anxiously.
Bertha drew herself up, looking more haughty than ever. “No, indeed; and I should not think of taking money for doing a thing like that!” she said indignantly.
The German laughed in a deprecating fashion as he said, in his deep, rumbling tones: “That may be all very well for you, but she has kept the money that was meant for me also, and this I do not approve.”