Chapter LXXX: In the Bridal Chamber

Lydia also leaped on shore, with the cable in her hand; she groped for a hook which she knew of, sunk into one of the willows, fastened her boat, and ran swiftly across the lawn, struck with unutterable terror. She saw nothing of her young mistress, neither on the lawn nor on the broad veranda, over which the storm was drifting.

The doors and windows were all closed. She listened, but could hear nothing—the trees moaned so loudly, and the tendrils of a great honeysuckle, that the wind had wrenched from its fastenings, was beating hard against the roof. In her anxiety the girl went out upon the lawn, searching for the lights she had seen. They came from two windows in the upper story, and shone dimly; for the glass was beaded with rain drops, that broke and smothered their light, which came through transparent curtains of muslin inside.

Still she saw nothing of her mistress. Once it seemed to her that she discovered a dark figure coming up from the willows, but, like everything else, it drifted out of shape. She turned her eyes on the house again. A cry broke from her.

Passing one of these windows she saw the shrouded figure of a woman. The girl did not stop to ask how her mistress came there; but sprang at once to a pillar of the veranda, against which was nailed the lattice work of an interlacing vine.

With the speed and lightness of a cat, she climbed this frail ladder, and moving over the wet shingles of the veranda, swept the water from a pane of glass with her hand, and looked through.

Lydia saw a large white bed, standing in the middle of a chamber she was familiar with, and on it an old man sleeping. No other living soul was in the room, and, exhausted with past bodily suffering, the old man seemed to have slept heavily through the storm.

Lydia drew back—this was not the room she sought. She turned a corner of the roof and paused at a faint line of light that fell across the sodden shingles, through another window, covered with cobweb lace, which was scarcely more than a mist. From this precarious elevation, she looked into a luxurious bed-chamber, to which it seemed as if a storm could never come. The snow-white bed was broad, and so clouded with lace that the outlines of two persons sleeping within could only be indistinctly seen.

Flowers were in the room; roses and a tall stalk of white lilies filled a vase, which occupied a little marble table near the bed. Across the silken lounge a muslin dress was thrown, around which some blue ribbons fluttered suddenly, as if a draught of air had been let into the chamber through some open door. If so, the door was instantly closed, for the ribbons settled down to their place, and the light, under its Parian shade, which had flared a little, burned steadily.

“She is there—she has been at the door,” thought the terrified girl, shivering in the rain, but more from fear than cold. “Oh, if she would but come away now!”

Bertha Canfield did not come away, but stood at the door, that shut in her two enemies, holding her breath, while she drew the poniard from the coils of her drenched hair. Then Lydia, who was watching keenly, saw the lace curtains sway and ripple like drifting snow, a dark figure swept through them, as it seemed, and three persons were outlined through the lace. A man lay sleeping soundly, with his head half buried in the pillow, and one hand falling supinely over the counterpane—the other arm half circled the fair form of a slumbering woman, whose cheek rested on his shoulder, and whose hair of pale gold swept over the linen that veiled his powerful chest.

Over these two sleepers the dark form of Bertha Canfield bent in powerful contrast, her garments black and dripping, the hood thrust from her head, which was that of an avenging angel.

For one awful minute Bertha stood gazing upon those two—the man who had murdered her mother, the woman who had so shamefully broken faith with herself. How helpless the strong man looked in his unconscious sleep! how fair and pretty she was, lying with the warm flush of a slumbering child on her cheek! Many a time, in their school-days, she had slept thus, circled by Bertha’s arm.

It was strange, but at the moment a gleam of tenderness for the woman found its way to that warped soul, and there, with her hand almost upon the man’s throat, she felt something like the softness of tears stealing into her bosom. But a thought turned them to ice. In the morning, another murder would be perpetrated. This man’s path was not red enough. His next victim would be Fletcher, who had twice saved her life—who had rescued this man from the deep.

Sleeping them so tranquilly with another murder in his heart! No; that should never be.

A swift uplifting of the poniard over the spot where she could mark his heart beating, a shivering poise of a moment, an upheaving of her bosom, and Bertha fell upon her knees, pressing the bed-clothes to her mouth, thus smothering the despairing cry that sprang to her lips:

“I cannot do it—oh! I cannot kill him, in her arms!”

Even these words did not arouse the sleepers. The voices of the storm had been so tumultuous that lesser noises went for nothing. Nor was the unhappy girl herself conscious that the room was rapidly filling with moist air from a window.

Through this sash, cautiously opened, Lydia was about to leap, when a hand was laid on her shoulder, and a woman sprang by her into the bridal chamber.

Going softly up to Bertha, where she was kneeling, this woman raised her gently from the floor.

“Come with me, Bertha; come with me.”

Bertha arose obediently, and came out from the cloud of lace, with both hands to her temples, looking weak and helpless.

“I could not do it! I could not do it!” she muttered, looking ruefully back at her enemies. “I was not strong enough.”

“No, no! Do not think of it again! Bertha.”

Lydia was in the room now. She knew the house well, and opening a door stood sentinel while Bertha was led through. Then she closed the latch, and followed those shadowy forms down-stairs, and out into the stormy night.

Bertha allowed herself to be conducted down to the water’s edge. Indeed, she had no power. The terrible excitement that had kept her up so long gave way, when that poniard dropped from her hand. Now she had but one wish—to lie down, in some safe, warm place, and rest.

She was helped into the boat with some difficulty, and slid down from her seat to the bottom, where she lay huddled in her cloak, shivering—almost dead.

Then Lydia stepped back under the willows, and fell upon her knees in the wet grass, with both hands fastened on the dripping garments of the dark figure that had come to her aid.

“Oh, Miss Clara—Miss Clara! Is it your ghost, or where did you come from if it isn’t?”

“Hush, Lydia; hush, or we shall drive her wild. Here is my hand; you will see that it is warm.”

Lydia seized the wet hand between both hers, and kissed it with passionate fondness.

“Oh, Miss Clara, is it you? or have I been a dreaming it, storm and all? What could have brought you here just in time?”

“I saw you from the yacht; saw your mistress, and her face frightened me, so I followed your boat.”

“Yes, yes: I did see you leaning over. I did see you, but you looked like a ghost. So did the ship.”

“Hark, Lydia! That is a moan coming from the boat. Where can we take your mistress? She will die here.”

Lydia started to her feet.

“Come down to the boat,” she whispered. “It will be with the stream now, and we can soon get home.”

Clara Anderson went down the bank, and gave some orders to a couple of men who sat waiting in a yawl, under the willows. Then she stepped into the little boat, lifted Bertha’s head to her lap, and the yawl swept out into the river towing the smaller craft with it.

The storm abated before they reached the island, and a pale moon drifted in and out of the broken clouds, but Bertha took no heed of that, or anything else. She was neither asleep nor awake—only very, very desolate.

Unmindful alike of the friend that held her so tenderly, or the men who lifted her from the boat, she walked feebly up to the house, and entered her own room as if waking out of some dream too awful for comprehension.

Once under shelter, Lydia became wonderfully active. She found wood, and kindled a bright fire in Bertha’s room; took the wet garments from her trembling limbs, heaped warm blankets upon the bed, and then heated wine, with spices, which she forced those quivering lips to drink. Then the girl thought of herself, threw off her own wet clothes, drank what was left of the wine, and laid herself down on a couch to sleep, muttering softly:

“Mistress—my poor, dear old mistress! Haven’t I done my best? Oh, if you could answer one word, and just say, ‘Lydia, I did well to trust you!’”

“Lydia,” said a weak voice from Bertha’s bed some time in the night, “Lydia, I have had such restless dreams. In one of them I have seen Clara Anderson.”