Chapter LXII: Despairing Prayers

Once more Mrs. Canfield questioned her daughter, and again Bertha declared, with rising impatience, that she loved Waldon with all her soul, and nothing on earth should ever separate her from him, if she could help it. The girl spoke quickly, and with decision, as persons of strong purpose and nervous temperament are apt to do when harassed, without visible reason, by the importunity of a weaker nature.

Bertha loved her mother dearly, but this persistent desire to fathom her heart was so inconsistent with her usual delicate reserve, that the girl grew restive under it, and answered her sharply, almost for the first time in her life, for every word which conveyed a doubt regarding the man she worshipped stung her like a wasp.

“I love him, and—but why ask this question over and over again, mother? Is it that some one has been slandering Waldon? If so, tell _him_. He is a man to defend his own honor.”

“I have heard nothing,” answered the mother, in a voice that struck the girl, even in her excitement, as almost unearthly.

They had been walking together up and down the road, and the twilight, which threatened storms, came upon them as this disturbing conversation took place. A stone wall ran along the highway, on which a tier or two of rails completed one of those fences so common to New England. On one of these jutting stones Mrs. Canfield sat down, looking so white and still that Bertha was stricken with compunction.

“Mother! mother! don’t look so deathly! I did not mean to speak so. For the whole world I would not do it again. Do—do say that I haven’t hurt you so much!”

Mrs. Canfield looked into her daughter’s excited face with a vague, yearning gaze, but said nothing.

“You know, mother, this is the first time I was ever cross to you, so you might forgive it.”

“Forgive!” said Mrs. Canfield, in that slow, far off voice. “I was thinking to ask forgiveness of my own child; but what good—what good!”

“Forgiveness of me! Dear, dear mother, do not break my heart. I know that it was wrong to answer you like that. Come, now, sweet old darling, let us kiss and make up!”

Bertha put down her fresh young mouth, quivering with penitence, and touched the white lips her mother neither offered nor withheld.

“Oh, mother, how cold you are! It is a kiss of ice!”

“Am I? Yes, it is a little cold.”

Bertha took off her white summer shawl, and wrapped it tenderly around the woman, who began to shiver.

“There! there! don’t act so strangely when I am trying so hard to make up.”

“Strangely! Can a mother be strange to her own child? Bertha, I have been a stranger to you all my life.”

Bertha tried to laugh.

“I am glad you can joke, mamma, for that looks as if you could forget how hard and saucy I was. Come, now, let us go home. Grandmother will have a good, strong cup of tea ready, and I’m sure you need it.”

Mrs. Canfield looked wearily around, as if she longed to escape, but yielded to Bertha’s arm, and went into the house. Seating herself at the table, she drank a cup of tea without appearing to notice how bitterly strong it was.

Bertha had no appetite. She thought that her mother was still wounded by the manner in which her questions had been repulsed, and grew painfully repentant. The old people tried to get up a pleasant conversation, but it died out in monosyllables; and when they arose from the table, a weird gloom had fallen upon the whole family.

At last Bertha went up-stairs, threw herself on the bed in her room, and thinking of her abrupt words, cried bitterly. The old lady was busy washing up the tea-things in the kitchen, and her husband went there to read the county paper by the lamp she was using.

Mrs. Canfield had watched these movements with silent vigilance. The strong tea strung her nerves with unnatural tension. She must be alone, and must have action. Bertha’s white shawl lay across a chair. She took it up, and glided out of the house, wrapping it around her head and shoulders. The valley was full of floating mist; through it came the distant fall of a mill-dam, with an undertone of waters flowing away softly beneath the veiled star-light.

Into this mist the lady plunged, bearing directly for one point on the bank of the river—a point she had never visited or looked toward since a young man was dragged from the whirling waters, and laid, stark and dead, on the grass her feet were now treading. Why did she seek that place? It was dark almost, and the stars that looked down upon her were pale and feeble, as if they, too, had committed some fault years before, and were striving to hide themselves among the floating gray of the clouds. She paused on the very spot where they had reverently laid him, and settled downward, grovelling to the earth, which her hands grasped, and her face touched. Then her moans arose, and broke the monotonous voice of the running waters, with a sound of woe that mastered it like a dirge. She called upon him—the idol, the lover of her youth—for help and forgiveness.

“It is for her sake—your child and mine—that I come to you. Oh, give me mercy and give me help! If the angels ever have compassion on a woman who sins, ask them to forbear this once, and let me come to you—come to you, my beloved, wherever they have placed you. Though the dreariest spot in all God’s universe, it will be Heaven to me!”

There were no sobs, no tears—only these dry, broken words pleading to one who had been sinful as herself—for that wretched mother, lying there upon the damp earth, wrapped in the gray mists that covered her like a pall, was afraid to ask help or mercy from the living God.

Full half an hour that miserable woman lay upon the earth, beseeching it, in her anguish, to open and swallow her up before another sin, from which all her being recoiled, came between her and all hope; but the merciless earth only chilled her to the vitals, and, when she lifted her eyes to heaven, the moon plunged under a cloud and hid itself leaving only a few pale stars to look down upon her despair.

But all at once a voice broke through the night, calling her home. The very voice, and the girl’s name heard so often when she had wandered away from home, a little child. She arose from the earth obediently, wound the white shawl closer, and walked with a heavy, dragging step toward the house, which an old man was leaving in great anxiety. A white object, drifting through the mist, checked the cry upon his lips, and turned it into thanksgiving.

“Thank God thee has come to no harm; but grandmother was dreadfully frightened,” said the old man, supporting his daughter across the road with his arm.

“She was always tender and good to me. You also, father: remember I have said that. No parents ever lived who forgave and loved so kindly. I have been silent, but not ungrateful, father; and never on this earth did I love you better than now. Do not forget to tell mother so in the morning.”

“Dear child, there is no need of this; but why not tell her yourself? It will be pleasantest to her so.”

“I! Oh, I may have forgotten it!”

She drew herself from his arm, and leaned heavily against the door-frame. The lamp shone upon her from the house room, and he saw that she was deathly pale.

“Come into the kitchen, child; grandmother has a fire there,” he said, tenderly.

“No, if you please, father, I will go to my room; there is something for me to do up there.”

A strange smile crept over her face as she spoke. He had seen such looks in the faces of patients in an insane asylum, and it brought a painful idea to his mind.

“Well, then, if thee had rather; but go to bed at once, and grandmother will bring up some hot drink. Thee shivers like a leaf.”

Mrs. Canfield was moving toward the stairs; but when her father followed her, she turned back, put her arms around his neck, and laid her cold cheek to his.

“Good-night, father.”

The sad pathos of her voice touched the old man. With infinite tenderness he kissed her again, and laid his hand on her head.

“Father, bless me! I want it—oh, I want it so much!”

“The God of Heaven—”

She interrupted him with a sharp cry.

“Not that—He cannot—He will not! Father, it is your blessing that I want. Give it me before I go.”

“Bless thee, oh, my child!”

The woman bent her head reverently, and without looking at her father again went up-stairs.