A Revelation for Bertha
THE weeks of winter dragged on; January wore itself out in fierce
storms. February was a month of keen frost and bright sunshine, which
reduced Bertha to the infliction of wearing coloured spectacles to keep
from going blind, and then March came in with lengthening days and
stormy winds which howled across the wastes, but bore on their gusty
breath a welcome hint of the coming spring.
It had been a busy winter for Bertha. Time for writing had been made
whenever other duties were not pressing, and her success had justified
the time she had spent on the task. Four stories had been sold, and
although three others had failed to find a market, she already knew
enough about the literary life to feel sure that the setback of their
rejection might be for her ultimate good. Meanwhile, she was intent on
getting her first book into shape, although she guessed that it would be
next winter before she could hope to finish it. All the same, it was
something to work for and hope for, while already she was happy in
thinking that she had really achieved something. The few dollars she had
earned would keep her in pocket money until Tom would be able to pay her
a salary again.
The joyfulness of feeling that she had found her work in the world and
that she was of so much use, that one family, at least, would find it
hard to do without her, was so great, that she was entirely content, and
would not have changed places with anyone. Her letters to her sisters
were so vigorous, bright, and breezy, that neither Anne nor Hilda could
in the least understand the change in her, as their replies abundantly
testified.
It was the last Sunday in March when Mrs. Smith drove her two children
over to Duck Flats to spend the morning with Grace, so that Bertha might
go to church. It was the first time since Christmas that Bertha had had
a chance to go to meeting, and so the occasion was very much in the
nature of a festival.
The morning was brilliantly fine, and on the south side of the house the
icicles were melting in the sun, although when night came again it would
most likely freeze as sharply as ever. Dicky and Molly were in wild
spirits, for they were going to church with Bertha, and the three tucked
themselves into the sledge and set off in good time, for they would not
risk being late on an occasion like this. Somehow Bertha’s thoughts kept
going to that Sunday last summer when she had taken the children to
church, and Eunice had been so sure that disaster was coming. How soon
the storm had come after that, and how truly awful the disaster had
been!
Bertha shivered as she looked at the gleaming white landscape and
thought of the bright hopes which lay buried underneath the snow, and
she found herself hoping that Eunice would have no forebodings of evil
to spoil this Sunday as it had done the other. But when she reached
Pentland Broads it was to find that Eunice had gone to a distant farm to
spend the day, in order that the mother of a large family might be able
to go to church with her husband.
“Some of us would hardly get a chance to put our heads outside our doors
all the winter, if neighbours and friends were not kind to us,” said
Mrs. Jones to Bertha, in explaining the reason why Eunice was not at
home.
“Everyone seems to be kind to each other here, I think,” said Bertha,
and was conscious of a huge relief, because there was no Eunice present
to foretell disaster. Of course it was very silly of her to be afraid,
and at any other time she would have been really glad to see Eunice, who
was her only close friend at Pentland Broads among a large number of
acquaintances.
The service was over, and Bertha was tucking the sledge robes round the
two children, when young Fricker came rushing up to her in a great state
of excitement.
“Oh, I say, Miss Doyne, I am glad to see you here this morning. I
spotted you in meeting, and thought my eyes were playing me a trick. I
should have come over to see you this week, but as you are here this
morning, why, I can tell you now. You remember that poor chap Bradgate
who was taken bad on the sledge?”
“Oh, is he dead?” cried Bertha, in a tone that was much more tragic that
she knew.
“No, I should say that the fellow has as many lives as a cat; at any
rate, he has not come to the end of them yet,” returned Fricker, with a
laugh, and then he pulled a thick letter out of his pocket, which he
handed to Bertha. “But I want you to take this home with you and read
it. You can return it at any time, only I think that it will interest
you, because it turns out that Bradgate comes from Nova Scotia, and he
has been about as all-round unfortunate as falls to the lot of most
men.”
“How funny that there should be three of us here so close together, and
only to find it out by accident that we all hail from Arcadia!” said
Bertha; and then she asked, with a little hesitation in her tone, “I
hope that Mr. Bradgate is really better now?”
“He’ll do, I fancy; but it beats me to think that he has been lying ill
at Rownton all this time and I have never been near him, when, so to
speak, he was one of my own people. I feel downright mean about it,
though of course I did not know. However, I shall go over and see him
next week if I can get away, and then I can give him my mother’s message
that she sent in that letter,” and Fricker nodded towards the letter
which he had given to Bertha.
“But if this concerns Mr. Bradgate, would you not rather that he saw it
first?” she asked.
“I should not show him the letter, and the message I know by heart. You
keep it, Miss Doyne, until I come for it. Hullo! this old horse of yours
wants to run over me, and I’m too valuable to be turned into road metal
just yet, so good morning!” Fricker stood aside and raised his hat as
old Pucker dashed ahead, kicking up the snow in a fashion suggestive of
a five-year-old, and actually squealing with delight at being in motion
again.
Bertha tucked the letter into the inside pocket of her coat, and thought
no more about it just then. The sun beat down in dazzling brilliancy,
and her eyes ached from the glare, despite her coloured spectacles. But
it was good to be out in the keen fresh air, and to know that the long
winter was nearly over.
Dicky and Molly chattered like two young magpies all the way home, and
if Bertha answered them in an abstracted fashion they did not notice it,
so there was no great harm done, and she was able to enjoy the peace and
rest of the long, monotonous drive in her own fashion. Mrs. Smith would
not stay for dinner because her husband would be expecting her home, and
when she had gone, Bertha’s first business was to get the midday meal
ready, though by this time it was long past midday, and breakfast was a
dim and distant memory.
Then came the delicious rest by the fire in the afternoon, while Grace
told the children Bible stories, and Bertha had nothing to do but lean
back in the rocking chair and think her own thoughts. The funny thing
was that she did not then remember the letter which Fricker had given
her; but then she was not thinking about him, or indeed anyone at
Pentland Broads. It was later, when she had donned her working pinafore
and gone out to the barn to milk the cow and feed the animals, that she
suddenly remembered that the letter was still in the pocket of her coat.
“How stupid of me to forget! But then I have been stupid more or less
all day to-day, I think,” she said to herself, as she pulled down a
great armful of swamp hay for the cow, saw that Pucker was getting a
comfortable supper, and attended to the other things which had to be
done on Sunday as well as every other day in the week.
“I have brought a letter home to read, and I am going to forget all
about it again unless you help me to remember,” she said to Grace, when
she went in with the milk pail.
“I will not let you forget; and in return for my kindness in reminding
you I shall want to see the letter, or at least to hear it read, unless
indeed it is very particularly private,” replied Grace.
“It cannot be that, or Mr. Fricker would not have given it to me to
read,” said Bertha. “I thought it was rather funny of him to bring it to
me, but he seems to think that because we both come from Nova Scotia we
ought to have a great deal in common. For my part, I don’t see that it
follows; but he is such a nice, friendly boy, that it is too bad to snub
him. And I fancy that he is homesick too, poor lad, so I am obliged to
have a soft corner in my heart for him.”
“That is undoubtedly good for you. It makes your sympathies wider, and
you can save the snubbing for Mr. Long when he comes home again. Fricker
is happily too young to need it,” laughed Grace.
It was not until the children were all in bed that Bertha fetched the
letter from the pocket of her thick driving-coat and, sitting down by
Grace, proceeded to read it aloud.
It was a long epistle in a woman’s handwriting, signed Mary Fricker, and
commencing “My dear son”. The first page was devoted to small items of
family interest, just those things which a homesick boy would love to
hear about, and then Mrs. Fricker plunged into the chief interest of her
letter.
“I was very much interested by your letter telling us about the
shortage of food at Pentland Broads in the blizzard. That girl
Bertha Doyne was fine and courageous to leave such a helpless
household to drive the sledge over for you, and it must have
been maddening indeed to discover that it was not foodstuffs
after all. I am glad to hear that she comes from Nova Scotia. It
is fine to think that our little state can produce real live
heroines as well as a fictitious Evangeline. Now, I am going to
tell you something which will amaze you, and that is, the Edgar
Bradgate who got so mixed as to the sledges is from Nova Scotia
also, and, though not actually your kinsman, is so nearly
connected with our family that we may almost consider him one of
ourselves. He is stepson to Cousin Fanny’s husband, whom you do
not know, but who is a very good fellow. His name is Mallom, and
he came over to see us yesterday, when he told us of Edgar’s
long illness at the police barracks at Rownton. He told us, too,
of some of the things that unfortunate young man has battled
through, and really it made my heart ache. It seems that, when
Edgar was of age, there was a little money to come to him from
his dead mother’s estate. This he was induced to invest in a
company which speculated in land and real estate of various
kinds. They gave Edgar employment as a travelling agent, and he
was abroad a great deal in the interest of his firm. For a whole
year he was in Peru, then he went to Australia, and afterwards
he was for a long time in Prince Edward Island. But there was
treachery somewhere; the promoters feathered their own nests at
the cost of the agent and the shareholders. After the company
was wound up there was a meeting of shareholders at Paston, at
which Edgar was present, and he was set upon by the infuriated
people, who would persist in believing that he was entirely to
blame, although he was really innocent, and very much the victim
of the rascally promoters. He would have been severely mauled,
perhaps even killed, if he had not succeeded in slipping away in
a boat, intending to row himself some distance along shore and
then to strike inland to reach the rail. But he was always the
most unfortunate of creatures. His boat got wedged in those
Mestlebury rocks which they call the Shark’s Teeth, and he
himself would have been drowned if it had not been for the pluck
of a girl—a poor fisher girl, I think she was—who swam out
with a rope to his boat, and so he was towed to safety. It took
almost his last cent to reward the girl for what she had done
for him, and he had to walk seventy miles to Mr. Mallom’s house,
earning his food by doing chores, or going hungry when he could
not get a job. I wish that you would cultivate his acquaintance,
my dear boy, for he is the sort of man it is good for a fellow
to know—undaunted in disaster, falling only to rise again, he
is bound to succeed in the long run. It is easy to see how much
Mr. Mallom thinks of him, and the pride he has in him. But Edgar
Bradgate is proud, and rightly so. He will not live on his
stepfather, but will make his own way in the world or starve,
and that is the right spirit to show.”
“Oh, Grace, what shall I do? To think that I have been keeping Mr.
Bradgate’s property from him for so many weeks, and he so poor; it makes
me feel unutterably mean!” cried Bertha, with actual tears in her eyes,
as she broke off from reading her letter. “But why, oh why did he not
try to find me out to ask for his coat and what was in it?”
“I should not be surprised to know that in the trouble of having to
escape in that fashion from the angry shareholders, he entirely forgot
that he had left his valuables in an outside coat; it might even be that
he forgot he had a coat with him at all. A man in peril of his life
twice in one day might be forgiven a lapse of memory like that,” replied
Grace, whose face showed a little pucker of anxiety, although she tried
to speak as cheerfully as usual.
“Then I must remind him of it as speedily as possible, for no one can
even guess how utterly thankful I shall be to get the wretched things
out of my possession. If I write a letter to him to-night, I may get a
chance to post it before the week is out,” said Bertha.
“But what can you say in your letter?” asked Grace, and now the pucker
of anxiety showed more plainly than before.
“I think that I shall tell him straight out that I have valuable
property belonging to him, and that the sooner he fetches it away the
better I shall like it,” Bertha answered shortly, for the whole thing
got upon her nerves.
“Oh, don’t do that!” cried Grace distressfully. “If you put a thing like
that in black and white, I shall never dare to be left alone again, for
I shall always be afraid that someone will come along to try and rob the
house. As it is, there is no danger at all; for the most optimistic of
thieves would hardly expect to find anything worth carrying away in the
house of a hailed-out farmer.”
“What can I say, then?” asked Bertha. “You see I must ask him to come
and fetch his property away, as I could not possibly send valuables like
that through the post.”
“Could you not write to him and ask him if he would kindly come over to
see you as soon as he is able to leave the police barracks? You might
say that you had news of importance for him which you could not very
well put in a letter. That would commit you to nothing, and if anyone
else read it they would not be unduly enlightened,” said Grace.
“I might do that, certainly, although I should think that he will be
mightily amazed, and perhaps a little disgusted, at receiving a letter
of that description from a girl he knows nothing about,” said Bertha,
shrugging her shoulders; for the letter written by Mrs. Fricker to her
son had somehow left the impression that Mr. Bradgate was the sort of
individual to be approached with respect.
“He will be surprised, probably; but as Mrs. Fricker speaks of him so
highly, he is probably a gentleman, so he will do as you ask him,
without unpleasant comment, and really I do not see how else you can
hope to see him, unless you ask him to come here. Would you like to get
Eunice to come and stay with me while someone drives you to Rownton?”
asked Grace.
“That would certainly be simpler than dragging a man who is an invalid
so many miles across the snow,” said Bertha.
“Write your letter to Eunice instead, then.” Grace had quite an eager
note in her tone now, for in her way she was quite as eager as Bertha to
get rid of that little case of dull-looking stones which had been in the
house so long.
Bertha wrote the letter, but it was Wednesday before there was any
chance of getting it sent to Pentland Broads, and it was the following
Sunday before she received a reply, and then Eunice wrote that it would
be a week before she could get away, as Mrs. Humphries was in bed with
bronchitis, and there was no one else to take the post office from her
shoulders.
“It seems as if I were fated to keep those wretched stones,” said
Bertha, when she had read the letter from Eunice.
“Only one more week to wait, dear, so have patience,” replied Grace
cheerfully, and neither she nor Bertha even dreamed of all that case was
to cost in care and trouble before it reached its rightful owner.