Chapter LXI: A Gloomy Household

The old friend and his wife moved about their house, during the next week, as if some person at the point of death lay in the chamber Mrs. Canfield occupied. Yet she was not really ill, but so mournfully self-absorbed that the family spoke in undertones when she was near. The festival of quiet joy those old people had promised themselves on the coming home of their child had turned almost into a funeral. Even Bertha, who had filled the whole house with sunshine, a few months before, seemed to be changed and thoughtful.

There was no ostensible reason for all this. Mrs. Canfield was not in danger certainly, and Bertha had parted with her lover only a few days before, with a sweet hope of meeting him at the old farm when the wedding-day was fixed, and her mother spoke as if that would be very soon.

Before leaving Willow Bend Mrs. Canfield had asked an interview with Waldon, at which Lydia would gladly have been a private auditor; but the door was closed fast, and she could only hope to hear by climbing on to the roof of the veranda, which she did, and crept like a cat to the window of Mrs. Canfield’s room, where she dragged the trailing masses of honeysuckle vines over her, and lay in wait for any stray word that might penetrate them. But the conversation had exhausted itself, and she only gathered up a sentence or two that, joined with what she had heard before, were full of grave significance.

When the vines settled around her, Mrs. Canfield was speaking.

“It is not that you love my child less—toward her you have not changed. Oh, sir, be frank with me! Is it for want of love that you threaten this cruel act? Tell me, if you would not have the guilt of an awful crime on your soul forever and ever!”

“Why should I repeat this, madam? It only wounds you when I say that, to her, I am unchanged.”

“But _can_ you love her so, and not be willing to forgive, for her sake, the mother who—who—”

A faint sob broke up the words she was trying to utter, and Waldon silenced them with sharp impatience.

“Feelings like mine are neither to be changed nor intensed,” he said. “To separate Bertha from her mother would be cruel, and render her miserable; to allow any association between that mother and my wife would be a degradation of my home. The thing is impossible. You have demanded perfect frankness, madam, and I give it, not willingly. I would have avoided this whole conversation had you permitted me; for if there is anything on earth that I would escape, it is a scene like this.”

“It is I—I alone that stand between my child and you!”

The dull, heavy agony in her voice disturbed even that hard heart. Waldon arose to avoid the better feelings that would sometimes rebuke him with their angel whispers.

“I cannot speak more plainly or more positively, madam.”

“But you will not tell her—you will wait until—until—the time?”

“I have told her nothing. On the contrary, I wish to spare your daughter and myself a scene that can bring only distress to us both.”

“Thank you!”

The words were simple and meek, but oh! how full of desolation!

Waldon arose to go. He had the cruelty to reach forth his hand. She shrunk back with a moan. Lydia, in her covert, thought of a poor little lamb she had once seen come up to the butcher, and lick the hand which held the knife ready to slay him. Neither of those persons heard it, but a sob shook those clustering honeysuckles, and frightened by it, the girl clapped a hand to her mouth, over which great tears rolled and fell upon the leaves like rain.

When Lydia had subdued herself and bent to listen again, Waldon was gone, and Mrs. Canfield had fallen upon her knees, and the voice of her bitter agony broke through the window:

“Oh, my God! my God! is it in this terrible form that my sin comes back again, now that I am weak and getting in years, with no strength to bear it!”

Lydia dared not stay longer. Her whole frame shook with sobs; her teeth ground together; both hands were clenched; but she could not subdue them, or force herself to listen where a human soul was thus pleading with its God.

This scene had happened on the day Bertha and her mother had left Willow Bend—one with terrible woe and foreboding—the other carrying away that traitor’s kisses on her lips, and hoarding their very memory as a consecration. Was it strange that all the pleasant sunshine left that farm-house when these two entered it?

Even Lydia went about the house like a broken-winged bird. The poor girl was bearing about with her that most intolerable of all burdens—a secret. She knew how hollow were the hopes which still kept Bertha’s cheek blooming, and her eyes bright, even in that solemn atmosphere. Every day, after the train came in, she was sent to the post-office for letters. When she saw that man’s writing, her hands would tremble with an angry wish to rend the paper to atoms. Sometimes she would fling such letters on the ground, and appease her wrath by stamping down the grass all around them.

“Oh, if I could only bury them out of her sight!” she would say, in confidence to herself, the only creature she could confide in or take counsel of. “But what’s the good? She’d cry her eyes out longing for ’em; and they’d sprout in the ground like Canada thistles, and come up lies! Let her love on. Some people live on poison—and she’s one—thinking it honey! Haven’t I seen it before?”

After a soliloquy like this, Lydia would take her letter from the ground, with the ends of her fingers, as if afraid of contagion, and deliver it to Bertha, who was sure to come along the road to meet her, and sit down on the first stone to read the precious missive, which was the very breath of life to her; for Waldon kept his promise; besides, he wrote letters with a sense of artistic pleasure, enriching every thought with poetry, which this bright, beautiful girl believed that love for her had inspired. Thus a few days rolled on at the farm-house, over which clouds were gathering with slow, steady blackness.