Chapter XXI: The First Letter

Bertha Canfield seemed to bring the glow and business of a bright outside world into the room where her mother was sitting when she came home. You never would have believed that slender, sad and delicate woman the mother of a being so full of grace and bloom as the girl who stooped down lovingly to kiss her before taking off her hat or gloves. The elder lady smiled upon the girl; but never, in this world, was a smile so infinite in its tenderness, yet without a gleam of sunshine in it. Bertha was used to the touching sadness of this smile; but a stranger, on first observing it, would have felt a mist of tears creeping to his eyes, if they were such eyes as get their dew from a compassionate heart.

“Why, child, you look so bright! After parting with Mary, too. I did not expect it.”

“Do I, mother, dear? Well, yes, I do not look even decorously sorry,” answered the girl, taking off her bonnet before the glass, where a beautiful face looked smilingly into hers. “But I was dreadfully sorry to part with her, only something happened to make me ashamed of crying so, with people looking on. Why is it, mother, that the very best feelings we can have are those we are ashamed of?”

“Because our best feelings are those we give to God, and thus hold sacred from human intrusion,” said the elder lady, in her usual slow, gentle voice.

“I think it was not exactly so with me; but it really did seem as if my heart would break when the boat swept off with my friend, and I gave way so completely that a gentleman I never saw before came up and spoke to me.”

“Indeed?” answered the mother; and a quick, startled look changed her face completely.

“No wonder you are surprised. It really was not just the proper thing; but he was so kind, and, in a certain way, respectful. Mother, in my whole life I never saw a face like his. It almost drove Mary out of my mind. Don’t look reproachful—not out of my heart. That, no man on earth can ever do!”

Mrs. Canfield still looked anxious and a little wild. She evidently thought this encounter on the wharf of more importance than it appeared to her daughter.

“Mother, he was so unlike any man I ever saw!”

“Hush, child! He must have been a bold man—and you are so young. What did he say to you?”

“Nothing, much; but I will tell you every word. Then say if I have done wrong.”

The elder lady listened with anxious attention for the few words that had in reality passed between her daughter and the man whom she had already begun to regard with terror. Her face cleared up a little when she learned how harmless and simple the interview had been; still it troubled her. The warm, peach-like bloom on her daughter’s cheek, and a certain strange light in her eyes, made the mother’s heart grow faint in her bosom.

Bertha saw this, and crowded herself into the little sofa on which her mother was sitting. Then she drew the gentle woman down, and laid the pale cheek against her own.

“Have I troubled you, mother? Have I done wrong?”

“No, no—only I am so much alone that trifles seem important to me.”

“Perhaps I should not have told you. After all, it was nothing.”

Mrs. Canfield did not hear this. She was thinking of something else. Bertha felt the faint shudder that crept over that delicate frame, and it filled her with self-reproach.

“She is so nervous,” the girl thought, “and I have made her worse.” Then she began to talk of other things.

“Some day we will go down to Virginia, and see what Mary means when she talks about her hundred slaves, and plantation life in the Old Dominion—won’t we, mother? She made me promise that I would never let you rest till I got consent. She thinks it would make you strong. Shall we go some day?”

“If you would like it, Bertha. The pleasantest place for me will always be where you are.”

“Dear, dear mother!”

“In all the wide world I have nothing else!” continued the mother, with pathetic sadness.

“And I? What have I but you, mother?”

Mrs. Canfield lifted her mournful eyes. They were large and dark gray, like her daughter’s; but all the fire had been quenched in them years ago, when love was crucified in a heart warm and ardent as that which swelled in the young bosom against which her head rested.

“Some day, my child—and it may not be long—there will be only a second place for me here!”

“This is a cruel thought—an impossible thing—believe it, mother! Oh, do believe it! How can such fancies creep into your mind?”

“We will not talk of them—at any rate, as yet, my child.”

“Nor think of them, mother. There! sit down among your cushions, and I will sing for you.”

Bertha arranged the cushions, put her mother’s workbasket in tempting proximity with the hand she dropped, and opened the piano. She was, in fact, so restless that nothing but action of some kind seemed possible to her. Mrs. Canfield took up her work, but scarcely drew a thread in the delicate embroidery; not that she listened to the rich burst of music that swelled through the house—her soul was too far away for that. But Bertha carried herself out of all sad thoughts by the glory of her own voice, and left her instrument only when the sunset flung a shower of gold upon her through the open windows.

Just then the door-bell rang, and she stood up, with her hand on the keys, holding her breath. It was a wild idea, but she had a presentiment that something unusual was going to happen. She looked around for her mother; she had left the room. That moment the old Quakeress came in with a letter in her hand.

“For me?” said Bertha, blushing crimson, and reaching forth her hand.

“For thee!” said the old lady.

Bertha looked at the address. A clear, bold hand had impressed the creamy white of the envelope, but she had never seen it before. She broke open the envelope and went to her room. It was the first letter that Fletcher had ever written her—a noble, grand letter; but that moment her heart was full of other subjects, and she fell to dreaming while it was in her bosom.