THAT LETTER AGAIN.
Weeks went by. Egbert Fletcher gained strength every hour. The perfect
stillness of the island, the bright, pure atmosphere, and, above all,
the presence of those devoted women, made his convalescence a tranquil
dream of Heaven. Bertha, the brilliant, beautiful Bertha, would have
made herself his slave, and gloried in the title, had he permitted it.
Alice was her own generous self again, and even Lydia came back to
snatches of the quaint humor and rollicking mischief that had forsaken
her at the period of that mournful death at the farm-house; Clara alone
remained gravely sad.
“She’ll marry him,” Lydia would assert to herself, jerking her thumb
toward the window of Fletcher’s room, “and maybe never give that other
rampageous scoundrel a thought. There’s some one up there that will see
about him safe enough. He may marry rich girls, and flourish like—like a
yellow pine tree on a hill; but, by-and-by, he’ll be struck with
lightning, root and branch, you’ll see! As for her, I wish she didn’t
know all that has nigh about killed me. It will always hang about her. I
can see it now, when a girl ought to be happy as the day is long,
pulling her down and covering her with blackness. She thinks I don’t see
it, but I do, I do! While that Judas Iscariot is within a thousand miles
of her, she’ll be breathing poison. Why didn’t he go down to Norfolk and
catch the yellow fever or cholera like a man!”
These thoughts haunted Lydia, who was young, poor thing, to be burdened
with the dark secret that had been laid upon her. She had no confidant,
but sometimes told her troubles to the winds and waters, when her boat
was far from shore, and she could give the fears that possessed her free
words. It was well that she had this small relief; for her mind was
getting fearfully warped and dark; fatal ideas of duty were gathering
about the secret which occupied her entire mind. The scene which she had
witnessed in that bridal chamber haunted her. Her young mistress must
never be so tempted again. Had she not promised in the presence of the
dead mother, to stand between her and all temptation? If there must be
retribution, Bertha should not take it.
These were awful thoughts to trouble a young creature like that; but
they fed upon her brain day and night.
Bertha, too, had a heavy burden of thought. She had accepted the love of
a man so feeble that a word of the truth which oppressed her might have
taken his life. She loved him now with a still, solemn, intense passion,
so at variance with anything known to her before that her mind could
scarcely comprehend it. Rather than have brought one shade of disgrace,
or one hour of absolute sorrow on that man, she would have died. From
him she would have no secret. That which her mother had felt bound to
reveal to the bad man, at whose very name she shuddered, must be
honestly told before she became the wife of Egbert Fletcher. Beyond
this, her mother’s secret should be locked up sacredly forever.
One day when Fletcher had regained so much strength that he talked of
trying the open air a little, Bertha—who had been watching the craving
avidity with which he looked out upon the world, while she sat at his
feet with a volume of poems lying open on her lap—took that sudden
courage which seizes upon a brave heart when some duty is to be
performed, and spoke out:
“Egbert, I have something sad to tell you. Will you hear it now?”
Fletcher turned from the green trees and soft grass that he had been
longing for, and saw that the girl at his feet was white as the dress
she wore, and that her hands were clasped firmly, like one who meditates
jumping off a precipice.
“Yes, now, Bertha; but it must be sad, indeed, to make you tremble so.
If there is anything in your heart that I ought to know—if you have one
lingering regret—”
“Oh, it is not that! it is not that!”
“Then there can be nothing that I shall shrink from.”
Bertha took a letter from her bosom. The paper had been wet, the ink in
some places had run together, but the writing had been pressed on the
paper with a desperate force, which no water could wash out. She gave
this letter to Fletcher, and leaning her head on one hand, waited in
dead silence for him to read it.
The young man flushed and kindled with keen indignation as he read that
mournful and most touching appeal to a man who had no mercy in has
heart; but through it all arose a glow of infinite tenderness for the
young creature at his feet, and such compassion for the mother who was
dead, as strong, merciful men have for women who have died in struggling
to redeem a great fault.
When the letter was finished, he folded it reverently, and lifting
Bertha’s head from its drooping position, drew her up to the bosom
pierced by the man who had so cruelly wounded her.
“My beloved! my darling! Did you think that I should love you less, or
that I would not have sheltered this wronged lady? Look up, Bertha, my
own, own wife!”
“And I could love that other man!”
This thought stung Bertha like the remembrance of a crime.
“One thing more, and you know all,” she said, avoiding his lips until
the last dregs of her secret were told. “There was a time when I almost
thirsted for that man’s life—when I meant to take it in order to avenge
my poor mother, and save you; but I was not strong enough. Being a woman
I could not do it; I tried, but failed; but still I sometimes pant to
strike him down as he struck her!”
“My poor darling, forget these thoughts—they belong to men!”
“But there was no man to defend her.”
“At any rate there is one to defend you. Now, Bertha, that all your
secrets are mine, will you refuse to kiss me?”
Bertha gave him her quivering lips to kiss, and went away to her room
with a feeling of tender worship for that man, in a heart which had
never fathomed its own depths of emotion before.
Fletcher was but mortal, with all his self-command, and that letter had
stirred up the pride and honest rage that drives a man to avenge the
honor of a beloved woman. He began to hate himself for the mercy which
had spared that bad man from the peril of his most certain aim. Why had
he refrained from shooting that magnificent villain on the spot? A
single touch of his finger might have done it. That he magnanimously
flung away this one chance of taking the man’s life was a subject of
stern self-reproach now. He was no duellist, but in the heat of his
indignation reasoned thus: Wrongs that deserve the deepest punishment
are such as no law can reach. Half the crimes for which men are
imprisoned and executed deserve less condemnation than those inflicted
on helpless women, who hide them, like vultures, in the hearts they are
consuming rather than cry aloud for the redress that never comes.
Russell Waldon had just as surely driven that gentle, helpless and
long-suffering woman to her death as if he had stabbed her to the heart
with his own hand. Yet where was the law that could reach him? In her
whole life she had done him nothing but good. With gentle humility, she
had asked a little mercy at his hands—a little forbearance for her
innocent child, whose future he had rudely grasped. The return was
insult, desertion—in the end, death! Was there a penalty for all this in
the law?
Beyond all this, Waldon, after murdering the woman, and, as he thought,
burying the guilty secret in his conscience, to save his own miserable
vanity had cast insidious slanders on the person whom he had once craved
as his wife, and proudly proclaimed as his betrothed.
In his horror of the cruel thing that had been exposed to him, Fletcher
allowed thoughts like these to sway him into a state of burning rage
against the man he had spared. If such thoughts were wrong, they sprang
out of a generous nature, thrown into sudden tumult when his frame was
weak, and his heart tender with the love of a woman.
A sharp pain in his chest reminded him at what cost this man had been
spared to wrong other women, and carry his wicked powers more deeply
into the social life such men poison.
“Oh, that I had known this!” cried Fletcher, walking the room in
feverish excitement—for he could not forgive himself that a generous
impulse had stayed his hand when Waldon was in his power. “His
punishment would have been just, his doom well earned; but in my
weakness I left two women unavenged, and thought myself acting right.
Poor, poor Bertha! no wonder she was driven to attempt the life I was
fool enough to spare! Oh, this pain! this pain!”
Fletcher flung himself on the bed, breathing hard, and feeling as if a
girdle of iron were tightening around his chest.
As he lay, writhing in pain, a little hand was laid on his forehead, and
a kindly voice inquired, with comforting lowness, if he would just lift
up his head and take a drop or two of medicine.
It was Lydia, with a spoon in one hand, which she held steadily to his
lips.
“There, now, take a good, long breath, and I’ll sit by you still as a
mouse. Miss B. is on her bed, having a sweet, soft cry all to herself.
Mrs. Forbes is off to the mainland, on some sort of an errand, and Uncle
Sam is off fishing; so you and I have got the house to ourselves, and
nothing but the flow of the river to disturb us; for Aunt Celia rests on
her oars when Uncle Sam’s gone, taking in wood, and getting up steam for
a new explosion. Now, Mr. Fletcher, being all alone, haven’t you
anything to say to me?”
“What should I have to say, Lydia?” answered Egbert, smiling, in spite
of his pain; “only to thank you for being so kind!”
“Oh, yes; that, of course. Every one thanks some one else for being
kind; but that isn’t just what I mean.”
“Then, what _do_ you mean, Lydia?”
“Mr. Fletcher, my old mistress loved me and trusted me. I knew all that
Miss Bertha has been telling you, long and long before you did.”
“How can you know what she has told me?”
“This way: she is up-stairs, crying softly, like a girl who is thankful
to lie down. Ah, Mr. Fletcher, secrets like this are a load to carry.
You are lying here, red in the face, bloodshot about the eyes, and
throwing out your arms and feet like a deer with a bullet in him. She
has given up her secret, and you’ve got it. I knew she would; but it
weighs on you, don’t it? You would give the whole world to lift it off
of your bosom, but it lies there like a great stone.”
“Lydia, you are a strange girl!” said Fletcher, losing all sense of his
pain in astonishment.
“Yes,” answered Lydia; “things make people strange. But I have this to
say: Don’t talk any more to Miss Bertha about this matter. Her great
stone is rolled away. She has done her duty. The angel, in unlocking her
heart, has let in ever so much sunshine. Don’t shut it out again with
dark looks, as if her burden had settled too heavy on you. Keep that
man’s name from her ears. Make her forget him—forget him yourself, if
you can. She will never let you fight another duel. When it comes to
that, she won’t break down a second time. Do you understand me, Mr.
Fletcher?”
“Yes, Lydia; I think so.”
“Then just snuggle down in that pillow and go to sleep. You want it bad
enough, gracious knows; and, when the worst comes, trust me.”
Fletcher obediently closed his eyes, for he wanted to think over what
the strange girl had said.