DESPAIRING PRAYERS.
Once more Mrs. Canfield questioned her daughter, and again Bertha
declared, with rising impatience, that she loved Waldon with all her
soul, and nothing on earth should ever separate her from him, if she
could help it. The girl spoke quickly, and with decision, as persons of
strong purpose and nervous temperament are apt to do when harassed,
without visible reason, by the importunity of a weaker nature.
Bertha loved her mother dearly, but this persistent desire to fathom her
heart was so inconsistent with her usual delicate reserve, that the girl
grew restive under it, and answered her sharply, almost for the first
time in her life, for every word which conveyed a doubt regarding the
man she worshipped stung her like a wasp.
“I love him, and—but why ask this question over and over again, mother?
Is it that some one has been slandering Waldon? If so, tell _him_. He is
a man to defend his own honor.”
“I have heard nothing,” answered the mother, in a voice that struck the
girl, even in her excitement, as almost unearthly.
They had been walking together up and down the road, and the twilight,
which threatened storms, came upon them as this disturbing conversation
took place. A stone wall ran along the highway, on which a tier or two
of rails completed one of those fences so common to New England. On one
of these jutting stones Mrs. Canfield sat down, looking so white and
still that Bertha was stricken with compunction.
“Mother! mother! don’t look so deathly! I did not mean to speak so. For
the whole world I would not do it again. Do—do say that I haven’t hurt
you so much!”
Mrs. Canfield looked into her daughter’s excited face with a vague,
yearning gaze, but said nothing.
“You know, mother, this is the first time I was ever cross to you, so
you might forgive it.”
“Forgive!” said Mrs. Canfield, in that slow, far off voice. “I was
thinking to ask forgiveness of my own child; but what good—what good!”
“Forgiveness of me! Dear, dear mother, do not break my heart. I know
that it was wrong to answer you like that. Come, now, sweet old darling,
let us kiss and make up!”
Bertha put down her fresh young mouth, quivering with penitence, and
touched the white lips her mother neither offered nor withheld.
“Oh, mother, how cold you are! It is a kiss of ice!”
“Am I? Yes, it is a little cold.”
Bertha took off her white summer shawl, and wrapped it tenderly around
the woman, who began to shiver.
“There! there! don’t act so strangely when I am trying so hard to make
up.”
“Strangely! Can a mother be strange to her own child? Bertha, I have
been a stranger to you all my life.”
Bertha tried to laugh.
“I am glad you can joke, mamma, for that looks as if you could forget
how hard and saucy I was. Come, now, let us go home. Grandmother will
have a good, strong cup of tea ready, and I’m sure you need it.”
Mrs. Canfield looked wearily around, as if she longed to escape, but
yielded to Bertha’s arm, and went into the house. Seating herself at the
table, she drank a cup of tea without appearing to notice how bitterly
strong it was.
Bertha had no appetite. She thought that her mother was still wounded by
the manner in which her questions had been repulsed, and grew painfully
repentant. The old people tried to get up a pleasant conversation, but
it died out in monosyllables; and when they arose from the table, a
weird gloom had fallen upon the whole family.
At last Bertha went up-stairs, threw herself on the bed in her room, and
thinking of her abrupt words, cried bitterly. The old lady was busy
washing up the tea-things in the kitchen, and her husband went there to
read the county paper by the lamp she was using.
Mrs. Canfield had watched these movements with silent vigilance. The
strong tea strung her nerves with unnatural tension. She must be alone,
and must have action. Bertha’s white shawl lay across a chair. She took
it up, and glided out of the house, wrapping it around her head and
shoulders. The valley was full of floating mist; through it came the
distant fall of a mill-dam, with an undertone of waters flowing away
softly beneath the veiled star-light.
Into this mist the lady plunged, bearing directly for one point on the
bank of the river—a point she had never visited or looked toward since a
young man was dragged from the whirling waters, and laid, stark and
dead, on the grass her feet were now treading. Why did she seek that
place? It was dark almost, and the stars that looked down upon her were
pale and feeble, as if they, too, had committed some fault years before,
and were striving to hide themselves among the floating gray of the
clouds. She paused on the very spot where they had reverently laid him,
and settled downward, grovelling to the earth, which her hands grasped,
and her face touched. Then her moans arose, and broke the monotonous
voice of the running waters, with a sound of woe that mastered it like a
dirge. She called upon him—the idol, the lover of her youth—for help and
forgiveness.
“It is for her sake—your child and mine—that I come to you. Oh, give me
mercy and give me help! If the angels ever have compassion on a woman
who sins, ask them to forbear this once, and let me come to you—come to
you, my beloved, wherever they have placed you. Though the dreariest
spot in all God’s universe, it will be Heaven to me!”
There were no sobs, no tears—only these dry, broken words pleading to
one who had been sinful as herself—for that wretched mother, lying there
upon the damp earth, wrapped in the gray mists that covered her like a
pall, was afraid to ask help or mercy from the living God.
Full half an hour that miserable woman lay upon the earth, beseeching
it, in her anguish, to open and swallow her up before another sin, from
which all her being recoiled, came between her and all hope; but the
merciless earth only chilled her to the vitals, and, when she lifted her
eyes to heaven, the moon plunged under a cloud and hid itself leaving
only a few pale stars to look down upon her despair.
But all at once a voice broke through the night, calling her home. The
very voice, and the girl’s name heard so often when she had wandered
away from home, a little child. She arose from the earth obediently,
wound the white shawl closer, and walked with a heavy, dragging step
toward the house, which an old man was leaving in great anxiety. A white
object, drifting through the mist, checked the cry upon his lips, and
turned it into thanksgiving.
“Thank God thee has come to no harm; but grandmother was dreadfully
frightened,” said the old man, supporting his daughter across the road
with his arm.
“She was always tender and good to me. You also, father: remember I have
said that. No parents ever lived who forgave and loved so kindly. I have
been silent, but not ungrateful, father; and never on this earth did I
love you better than now. Do not forget to tell mother so in the
morning.”
“Dear child, there is no need of this; but why not tell her yourself? It
will be pleasantest to her so.”
“I! Oh, I may have forgotten it!”
She drew herself from his arm, and leaned heavily against the
door-frame. The lamp shone upon her from the house room, and he saw that
she was deathly pale.
“Come into the kitchen, child; grandmother has a fire there,” he said,
tenderly.
“No, if you please, father, I will go to my room; there is something for
me to do up there.”
A strange smile crept over her face as she spoke. He had seen such looks
in the faces of patients in an insane asylum, and it brought a painful
idea to his mind.
“Well, then, if thee had rather; but go to bed at once, and grandmother
will bring up some hot drink. Thee shivers like a leaf.”
Mrs. Canfield was moving toward the stairs; but when her father followed
her, she turned back, put her arms around his neck, and laid her cold
cheek to his.
“Good-night, father.”
The sad pathos of her voice touched the old man. With infinite
tenderness he kissed her again, and laid his hand on her head.
“Father, bless me! I want it—oh, I want it so much!”
“The God of Heaven—”
She interrupted him with a sharp cry.
“Not that—He cannot—He will not! Father, it is your blessing that I
want. Give it me before I go.”
“Bless thee, oh, my child!”
The woman bent her head reverently, and without looking at her father
again went up-stairs.