IN THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.
Lydia also leaped on shore, with the cable in her hand; she groped for a
hook which she knew of, sunk into one of the willows, fastened her boat,
and ran swiftly across the lawn, struck with unutterable terror. She saw
nothing of her young mistress, neither on the lawn nor on the broad
veranda, over which the storm was drifting.
The doors and windows were all closed. She listened, but could hear
nothing—the trees moaned so loudly, and the tendrils of a great
honeysuckle, that the wind had wrenched from its fastenings, was beating
hard against the roof. In her anxiety the girl went out upon the lawn,
searching for the lights she had seen. They came from two windows in the
upper story, and shone dimly; for the glass was beaded with rain drops,
that broke and smothered their light, which came through transparent
curtains of muslin inside.
Still she saw nothing of her mistress. Once it seemed to her that she
discovered a dark figure coming up from the willows, but, like
everything else, it drifted out of shape. She turned her eyes on the
house again. A cry broke from her.
Passing one of these windows she saw the shrouded figure of a woman. The
girl did not stop to ask how her mistress came there; but sprang at once
to a pillar of the veranda, against which was nailed the lattice work of
an interlacing vine.
With the speed and lightness of a cat, she climbed this frail ladder,
and moving over the wet shingles of the veranda, swept the water from a
pane of glass with her hand, and looked through.
Lydia saw a large white bed, standing in the middle of a chamber she was
familiar with, and on it an old man sleeping. No other living soul was
in the room, and, exhausted with past bodily suffering, the old man
seemed to have slept heavily through the storm.
Lydia drew back—this was not the room she sought. She turned a corner of
the roof and paused at a faint line of light that fell across the sodden
shingles, through another window, covered with cobweb lace, which was
scarcely more than a mist. From this precarious elevation, she looked
into a luxurious bed-chamber, to which it seemed as if a storm could
never come. The snow-white bed was broad, and so clouded with lace that
the outlines of two persons sleeping within could only be indistinctly
seen.
Flowers were in the room; roses and a tall stalk of white lilies filled
a vase, which occupied a little marble table near the bed. Across the
silken lounge a muslin dress was thrown, around which some blue ribbons
fluttered suddenly, as if a draught of air had been let into the chamber
through some open door. If so, the door was instantly closed, for the
ribbons settled down to their place, and the light, under its Parian
shade, which had flared a little, burned steadily.
“She is there—she has been at the door,” thought the terrified girl,
shivering in the rain, but more from fear than cold. “Oh, if she would
but come away now!”
Bertha Canfield did not come away, but stood at the door, that shut in
her two enemies, holding her breath, while she drew the poniard from the
coils of her drenched hair. Then Lydia, who was watching keenly, saw the
lace curtains sway and ripple like drifting snow, a dark figure swept
through them, as it seemed, and three persons were outlined through the
lace. A man lay sleeping soundly, with his head half buried in the
pillow, and one hand falling supinely over the counterpane—the other arm
half circled the fair form of a slumbering woman, whose cheek rested on
his shoulder, and whose hair of pale gold swept over the linen that
veiled his powerful chest.
Over these two sleepers the dark form of Bertha Canfield bent in
powerful contrast, her garments black and dripping, the hood thrust from
her head, which was that of an avenging angel.
For one awful minute Bertha stood gazing upon those two—the man who had
murdered her mother, the woman who had so shamefully broken faith with
herself. How helpless the strong man looked in his unconscious sleep!
how fair and pretty she was, lying with the warm flush of a slumbering
child on her cheek! Many a time, in their school-days, she had slept
thus, circled by Bertha’s arm.
It was strange, but at the moment a gleam of tenderness for the woman
found its way to that warped soul, and there, with her hand almost upon
the man’s throat, she felt something like the softness of tears stealing
into her bosom. But a thought turned them to ice. In the morning,
another murder would be perpetrated. This man’s path was not red enough.
His next victim would be Fletcher, who had twice saved her life—who had
rescued this man from the deep.
Sleeping them so tranquilly with another murder in his heart! No; that
should never be.
A swift uplifting of the poniard over the spot where she could mark his
heart beating, a shivering poise of a moment, an upheaving of her bosom,
and Bertha fell upon her knees, pressing the bed-clothes to her mouth,
thus smothering the despairing cry that sprang to her lips:
“I cannot do it—oh! I cannot kill him, in her arms!”
Even these words did not arouse the sleepers. The voices of the storm
had been so tumultuous that lesser noises went for nothing. Nor was the
unhappy girl herself conscious that the room was rapidly filling with
moist air from a window.
Through this sash, cautiously opened, Lydia was about to leap, when a
hand was laid on her shoulder, and a woman sprang by her into the bridal
chamber.
Going softly up to Bertha, where she was kneeling, this woman raised her
gently from the floor.
“Come with me, Bertha; come with me.”
Bertha arose obediently, and came out from the cloud of lace, with both
hands to her temples, looking weak and helpless.
“I could not do it! I could not do it!” she muttered, looking ruefully
back at her enemies. “I was not strong enough.”
“No, no! Do not think of it again! Bertha.”
Lydia was in the room now. She knew the house well, and opening a door
stood sentinel while Bertha was led through. Then she closed the latch,
and followed those shadowy forms down-stairs, and out into the stormy
night.
Bertha allowed herself to be conducted down to the water’s edge. Indeed,
she had no power. The terrible excitement that had kept her up so long
gave way, when that poniard dropped from her hand. Now she had but one
wish—to lie down, in some safe, warm place, and rest.
She was helped into the boat with some difficulty, and slid down from
her seat to the bottom, where she lay huddled in her cloak,
shivering—almost dead.
Then Lydia stepped back under the willows, and fell upon her knees in
the wet grass, with both hands fastened on the dripping garments of the
dark figure that had come to her aid.
“Oh, Miss Clara—Miss Clara! Is it your ghost, or where did you come from
if it isn’t?”
“Hush, Lydia; hush, or we shall drive her wild. Here is my hand; you
will see that it is warm.”
Lydia seized the wet hand between both hers, and kissed it with
passionate fondness.
“Oh, Miss Clara, is it you? or have I been a dreaming it, storm and all?
What could have brought you here just in time?”
“I saw you from the yacht; saw your mistress, and her face frightened
me, so I followed your boat.”
“Yes, yes: I did see you leaning over. I did see you, but you looked
like a ghost. So did the ship.”
“Hark, Lydia! That is a moan coming from the boat. Where can we take
your mistress? She will die here.”
Lydia started to her feet.
“Come down to the boat,” she whispered. “It will be with the stream now,
and we can soon get home.”
Clara Anderson went down the bank, and gave some orders to a couple of
men who sat waiting in a yawl, under the willows. Then she stepped into
the little boat, lifted Bertha’s head to her lap, and the yawl swept out
into the river towing the smaller craft with it.
The storm abated before they reached the island, and a pale moon drifted
in and out of the broken clouds, but Bertha took no heed of that, or
anything else. She was neither asleep nor awake—only very, very
desolate.
Unmindful alike of the friend that held her so tenderly, or the men who
lifted her from the boat, she walked feebly up to the house, and entered
her own room as if waking out of some dream too awful for comprehension.
Once under shelter, Lydia became wonderfully active. She found wood, and
kindled a bright fire in Bertha’s room; took the wet garments from her
trembling limbs, heaped warm blankets upon the bed, and then heated
wine, with spices, which she forced those quivering lips to drink. Then
the girl thought of herself, threw off her own wet clothes, drank what
was left of the wine, and laid herself down on a couch to sleep,
muttering softly:
“Mistress—my poor, dear old mistress! Haven’t I done my best? Oh, if you
could answer one word, and just say, ‘Lydia, I did well to trust you!’”
“Lydia,” said a weak voice from Bertha’s bed some time in the night,
“Lydia, I have had such restless dreams. In one of them I have seen
Clara Anderson.”