Tremulous Beginnings
IT was 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?