BERTHA'S UPWARD FLIGHT
Bertha was eating her supper, after a hard day's work in her little
hotel, when a little yellow envelope was handed to her. The words of the
message were few, but they were meaning-full: "Come at once. Mart hurt,
not expected to live." It was signed by Williams. While still she sat
stunned and hesitant, under the weight of this demand, another and much
more explicit telegram came: "Johnson, superintendent, is ordered to
fetch you with special train. Don't delay. Mart needs you--is calling
for you. Come at once!"
The phrase "is calling for you" reached her heart--decided her. She
rose, and, with a word of explanation to her housekeeper, put on her
hat, and threw a cloak over her arm. "I've got to go to Cripple. Captain
Haney is sick, and I've got to go to him. I don't know when I'll be
back," she said. "Get along the best you can." Her face was white but
calm, and her manner deliberate. "Send word to mother that Mart is hurt,
and I've gone up to see him. Tell her not to worry."
To her night clerk, who had come on duty, she quietly remarked: "I
reckon you'll have to look after things to-morrow. I'll try to get back
the day after. If I don't, Lem Markham will take my place." While still
she stood arranging the details of her business a short, dark man
stepped inside the door, and very kindly and gravely explained his
errand. "I'm Johnson, the division superintendent. They've telegraphed
me for a special, and I'm going to take you up myself. Mart is a friend
of mine," he added, with some feeling.
She thanked him with a look and a quick clasp of his hand, and together
they hurried into the street and down to the station, where a locomotive
coupled to a single coach stood panting like a fierce animal, a cloud of
spark-lit smoke rolling from its low stack. The coach was merely a short
caboose; but the girl stepped into it without a moment's hesitation, and
the engine took the track like a spirited horse. As the fireman got up
speed the car began to rock and roll violently, and Johnson remarked to
the girl: "I guess you'd better take my chair; it's bolted to the floor,
and you can hang on when we go round the curves."
She obeyed instantly, and with her small hands gripping the arm-rests of
the rude seat cowered in silence, while the clambering monster rushed
and roared over the level lands and labored up the grades, shrieking now
and again, as if in mingled pain and warning. Johnson and the brakeman,
for the most part, kept to the lookout in the turret, and the girl rode
alone--rode far, passing swiftly from girlhood to womanhood, so full of
enforced meditation were the hours of that ride. It seemed that she was
leaving something sweet and care-free behind her, and it was certain
that she was about to face death. She had one perfectly clear
conception, and that was that the man who had been most kind to her, and
to whom she had given her promise of marriage, was dying and needed
her--was calling for her through the night.
Burdened with responsibility from her childhood, accustomed to make her
own decisions, she had responded to this prayer, knowing dimly that this
journey denoted a new and portentous experience--a fundamental change in
her life.
She had admired and liked Haney from the first, but her feeling even yet
was very like that of a boy for a man of heroic statue--her regard had
very little of woman's passion in it. She was appalled and benumbed by
the thought that she was soon to look upon him lying prone. That she
might soon be called upon to meet those bold eyes closing in death she
had been warned, and yet she did not shrink from it. The nurse, latent
in every woman, rose in her, and she ached with desire of haste, longing
to lay her hand upon the suffering man in some healing way. His
kindness, his gentleness, during the days of his final courtship had
sunk deep--his generosity had been so full, so free, so unhesitating.
She thought of her mother, and as a fuller conception of the alarm and
anxiety she would feel came to her, she decided to send her a telegram.
"She will know it was my duty to go," she decided. "As for the
hotel--what does it matter now?" Nothing seemed to matter, indeed, save
the speed of her chariot.
The night was long, interminably long. Once and again Johnson came down
out of his perch, and spoke a few clumsy words of well-meaning
encouragement, but found her unresponsive. Her brain was too busy with
taking leave of old conceptions and in mastering new duties to be
otherwise than vaguely grateful to her companions. Her mind was clear on
one other point--this journey committed her to Marshall Haney. There
could be no further hesitation. "Some time, soon, if he lives, I must
marry him," she thought, and the conception troubled her with a new
revelation of what that relationship might mean. She felt suddenly very
small, very weak, and very helpless. "He must be good to me," she
murmured. And then, as the words of his prayer to her came back, she
added: "And I'll be good to him."
Far and farther below her shone the lights in the little hotel, and the
busy and jocund scenes of her girlish life receded swiftly. At this
moment her desk and the little sitting-room where the men lounged seemed
a haven of peace and plenty, and the car, rocking and plunging through
the night, was like a ship rising and falling on wild seas under unknown
stars.
* * * * *
The clear light of the mountain dawn was burnishing brass into gold as
the locomotive with its tolling bell slid up the level track at the end
of its run, and came to a stealthy halt beside the small station.
"Here we are!" called Johnson from his turret, and Bertha rose, stiff
and sore with the long night's ride, her resolution cooled to a kind of
passive endurance. "I'm ready!" she called back.
Williams met her at the step. "It's all right, sis. Mart's still
here--and waiting for you."
Instantly, at sight of his ugly, familiar, friendly face, she became
alert, clear-brained. "How is he?"
"Pretty bad."
"What's it all about? How did it happen?"
"I'll clear that up as we go," he replied, and led the way to a
carriage.
Once inside, she turned her keen gaze upon him. "Now go
ahead--straight."
He did so in the blunt terms of a man whose life had been always on the
border, and who has no nice shading in act or word.
"Is he dying?" she asked at the first pause.
"I'm afraid he is, sister," he replied, gently. "That's what's made the
night seem long to us; but you're here and it's all right now."
That she was to look on him dying had been persistently in her mind, but
that she was to see him mangled by an assassin added horror to her
dread. In spite of her intrepid manner, she was still girl enough to
shudder at the sight of blood.
Williams went on. "He's weak, too weak to talk much, and so I'm going to
tell you what he wants. He wants you to marry him before he dies."
The girl drew away. "Not this minute--to-night?"
"Yes; he wants to give you legal rights to all he has, and you've got to
do it quick. No tellin' what may happen." His voice choked as he said
this.
Bertha's blood chilled with dismay. Her throat filled and her bosom
swelled with the effort she made at self-control, and Williams, watching
her with bright eyes of admiration, hurried on to the end. "Everything
is ready. There is a priest, if you want him, and Judge Brady with a
civil ceremony, if that will please you better, or we'll get a
Protestant minister; it's for you to say. Only the knot must be tied
good and tight. I told the boys you'd take a priest for Mart's sake. He
says: 'Make it water-proof.' He means so that no will-breaking brothers
or cousins can stack the cards agin you. And now it's up to you, little
sister. He has only a few hours anyway, and I don't see that you can
refuse, specially as it makes his dying--" He stopped there.
The street was silent as they drew up to the saloon door, and only
Slater and one or two of his friends were present when Bertha walked
into the bar-room, erect as a boy, her calm, sweet face ashen white in
the electric light. For an instant; she stood there in the middle of the
floor alone, her big dark eyes searching every face. Then Judge Brady, a
kindly, gray-haired man, advanced, and took her hand. "We're very glad
to see you," he gravely said, introducing himself. Williams, who had
entered the inner room, returned instantly to say: "Come, he's waiting."
Without a word the bride entered the presence of her groom, and the
doctor, bending low to the gambler, said: "Be careful now, Mart. Don't
try to rise. Be perfectly still. Bertie has come."
Haney turned with a smile--a tender, humorous smile--and whispered:
"Bertie, acushla mavourneen, come to me!"
Then the watchers withdrew, leaving them alone, and the girl, bending
above him, kissed him. "Oh, Captain, can't I do something? I _must_ do
something."
"Yes, darlin', ye can. You can marry me this minute, and ye shall. I'm
dyin', girl--so the doctor says. I don't feel it that way; but, anyhow,
we take no chances. All I have is for you, and so--"
She put her hand ever his lips. "You must be quiet. I understand, and I
will do it--but only to make you well." She turned to the door, and her
voice was clear as she said to those who waited: "I am ready."
"Will you have Father Kearney?" asked Williams.
She turned towards Haney. "Just as he says."
The stricken miner, ghastly with the pain brought on by movement,
responded to the doctor's question, only by a whisper: "The
priest--first."
The girl heard, and her fine, clear glance rested upon the face of the
priest. Tears were on her cheeks, but a kind of exultation was in her
tone as she said: "I am willing, father."
With a look which denoted his appreciation of the girl's courage, the
priest stepped forward and led her to her place beside her bridegroom.
She took Haney's big nerveless hand in her firm grasp, and together they
listened to the solemn words which made them husband and wife. It seemed
that the gambler was passing into the shadow during the opening prayer,
but his whispered responses came at the proper pauses, and only when the
final benediction was given, and the priest and the judge fell back
before the rush of the young doctor, did the wounded man's eyes close in
final collapse. He had indeed reached the end of his endurance.
The young wife spoke then, imperiously, almost fiercely, asking: "Why is
he lying here? This is no place for him."
The doctor explained. "We were afraid to move him--till you came. In
fact, he wouldn't let me move him. If you say so now, we will take him
up." With these words the watchers shifted their responsibility to her
shoulders, uttering sighs of deep relief. Whatever happened now, Mart's
will had been secured. At her command they lifted the table on which her
husband lay, and the wife walked beside it, unheeding the throngs of
silent men walling her path. Every one made way for her, waited upon
her, eager to serve her, partly because she was Marshall Haney's wife,
but more because of her youth and the brave heart which looked from her
clear and candid eyes.
She showed no hesitation now, gave out no word of weakness; on the
contrary, she commanded with certainty and precision, calling to her aid
all that the city afforded. Not till she had summoned the best surgeons
and was sure that everything had been done that could be done did she
permit herself to relax--or to think of rest or her mother.
When she had sunk to sleep upon a couch beside her husband's bed,
Williams, with a note of deep admiration, demanded of the surgeon:
"Ain't she a little Captain? Mart can't die now, can he? He's got too
much to live for."