Against her Will
IT was 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.”
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 up _en route_ in 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.”