Chapter XXVIII: Vital Questions

Bertha slept. The nervous shock had passed off, and she was dreaming of a water-fall where every drop of spray broke in music as it fell to the earth; but all at once the smile left her lips, her brow contracted, and she began to breathe heavily. The door had opened without noise; Clara Anderson came into the chamber and drew close to the bed. A pale, anxious face it was that looked down upon that sleeping girl.

Again Bertha frowned, and put up her hands vaguely, as if she felt danger nigh even in her dreams.

“Bertha! Bertha Canfield!”

Bertha started from her pillow. Her nerves were so shaken by her fall that the voice alarmed her; but she recognized Clara at once, and, though still weak and faint, held out her hand smiling.

“They told me you were hurt, Bertha. I could not go away knowing that.”

“You are kind, Clara. I have been looking for you, it seems to me; but just now my head is a little bewildered. When were you not kind to me? Clara, I think I was dreaming about you just now.”

“Were you, Bertha? Sometimes I wish that no dream would ever haunt me again.”

Clara’s voice sounded so strangely that Bertha half raised herself on the pillow, and supported her head on one arm, while Clara stood regarding her with that singular look—half tender, half questioning.

The young girl shrunk from that earnest gaze and made a nervous effort to arrange her dress, for her habit had been unbuttoned, and left the graceful whiteness of her neck exposed, while her garments were generally in picturesque derangement. Indeed, Bertha looked very lovely amid the shadows of the room, with her hair falling about her shoulders and her great eyes full of strange bewilderment.

“I hardly knew you at first, Clara,” she said, wishing to atone for any deficiency of warmth in her reception. “I am dizzy still from my fall. I did not know how nervous it has made me till now.”

“Have you known the man who rescued you long?” questioned Clara, speaking low and hoarsely.

Bertha was wounded by the tone of this question. There was bitterness in it.

“Not very long,” she answered coldly.

“I should think gratitude to any one a sweet feeling,” pursued Clara, more as if talking to herself than addressing her companion. “Almost like love.”

Bertha felt hurt. She was both embarrassed and pained without knowing why.

“You have grown very lovely since we met. Still that is only a few weeks ago,” said Clara, regarding her with embarrassing interest.

Bertha turned away her face. She could not bear to be so coldly complimented by her close friend.

“You are angry,” said Clara. “I was very rude. I beg your pardon. You see I am forgetting even the usual forms of social intercourse in my hermit life.”

“Then you most be greatly changed in a few days; you, Clara, who were my model for everything kind and gracious.”

“Was I ever that? Perhaps. But with some people harshness genders harshness, and I have been treated so roughly.”

“I am very, very sorry,” said Bertha, and her eyes filled with tears; “but perhaps you take little slights too earnestly. The girls never meant half they said or did at school, you know.”

“The girls! Ah! their playful spite was heaven to what I have experienced since. Look at me. Am I handsome?”

There was a mocking irony in Clara’s voice that troubled her friend.

“You always were the most beautiful girl in your class—I used to think in the whole school. But somehow you—there is a change.”

“That is honest,” answered Clara. “Then you think I have lost all the beauty for which some of the girls hated me?”

“Lost—no! But it is changed. There is something on your forehead which makes one wonder. You are pale, too, and your eyes have a light that I never saw in them at school.”

“I look much older within the last month, don’t I?”

“No; but stranger—less contented. I fear that you are not quite happy. This sewing must be hard work. I wonder why you chose it for a living. People don’t think how sensitive a person may be about working. To me there is something grand in honorable labor of any kind.”

“You are very kind—honestly kind, I think, Bertha.”

“I meant to be so; indeed I did.”

Again Clara returned to the one painful subject.

All at once, with an effort that seemed to hold her breath in thrall, Clara grasped Bertha’s hand.

“Bertha, we have been friends—fast friends—and it will be an evil day when we are anything else. Tell me; do you care for—do you love the man who dragged you back from the precipice to-day?”

Bertha tried to wrest her hand from that fierce clasp.

“Why, Clara, what has come over you, that you ask such strange, wild questions?”

“Strange are they; wild and rude. Still, Bertha, you will remember our old friendship and answer them.”

“No one need be ashamed of being loved, I dare say; but I am very reluctant to think of these things, much less talk about them, even to you, Clara.”

“Still, do answer me.”

“This is unkind, Miss Anderson,” said Bertha, with tears in her eyes. “I cannot permit any one to question me in this way.”

Clara looked at her earnestly, and a shade of gentle feeling softened the brightness of her eyes.

“Yes, it is unkind, and I have no right to annoy you,” she said. “Still, if you would only be frank with me.”

“I will be frank, and tell anything that one girl has a right to ask of another; but I cannot listen to such cruel questions. I am sure you did not think how strange they were.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” answered Clara, with a hoarse laugh; “but I have gone through with worse things so often that all this seems gentle. Harsh usage has made me rude.”

“You were never harsh or pressing like this before, and I dare say did not mean it now; but I am not well yet, and so nervous,” she continued, with quivering lips. “Pray forgive me if I have been impatient.”

“I did not mean to wound you. There exists a reason why I have asked so awkwardly, and in so many ways, if you love that man. Would it distress you much to answer me? Frankness might save a world of pain.”

Bertha’s eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed angrily.

“You have no right to ask such questions, Clara Anderson, let your reasons be what they may. If you wish to talk against Mr. Waldon, or offer advice about him, I would rather not hear a word; that would seem as if I had an interest in him.”

Clara’s face lighted up. It was a beautiful and instantaneous change. She was so anxious to have her fears contradicted that her heart seized on this vague speech as a denial.

Bertha remarked the sudden change in her features—a change such as few human beings are capable of—and smiled.

“Have I said anything to give you pleasure?” she murmured.

“Me! No! Why do you ask?”

“Your cheek bloomed out so suddenly, and I could just catch a shadow of the old dimples about your mouth.”

“Well, you see how soon smiles spring out of kindness,” she said eagerly. “Now I am going away and will not trouble you again.”

“You do not trouble me,” said Bertha, struggling between kind feelings and a sense of offended modesty. “If you would only talk of something else I should be very glad; only I am not strong just now.”

“I see it. Forgive me,” answered Clara, moving toward the door. “Sleep if you can; be happy, and sometimes think kindly of others in the world who are quite as sensitive, but less fortunate than yourself.”

“I do think of them very often, and always kindly. If I am better off than some it is from no merit of my own, while there is real honor in such struggles as you are making, my dear friend.”

“Well, thank you. I am going now.”

“Wait a moment, please! Don’t be offended, but—”

“Well. Go on.”

“I would like to say something to you about Mr. Lane.”

“Not now! Not now!” answered Clara. “I cannot think of him!”

“I meant no harm,” pleaded Bertha. “I beg your pardon.”

Again Clara swept toward the door, and paused with her hand on the latch.

“I thank you,” she said; “you meant kindly. I am sorry to have disturbed you. Good-by.”