Chapter XXXIII: The Pious Fraud

Ever since the return of Mrs. Canfield to her home in New York, Lydia had been surprised to find a bouquet of newly cut flowers just within the door each morning. Asking no questions, and making no comments in basement or parlor, the girl had gloried in placing these trophies upon the pillow of her young mistress before she was awake in the morning.

At first Bertha had shyly questioned her little maid about these flowers, but with a consciousness all the time that she could account for them better than the girl herself. Indeed Lydia could give her no information except that each day, just after the outer doors were unlocked, these flowers were left on the marble floor of the vestibule by some person who was sure to depart before any one had time to see him.

Of course Lydia knew that such flowers could be intended for no one but Miss Bertha and carried them up accordingly.

This was all the girl had to tell. She had been delighted with these attentions to her young lady, and proud of the confidential relations they had established, until that bouquet of moss roses, and the poem in the handwriting of a man who had brought so much misery into another house had alarmed her. Then in the wrath of her warm heart she resolved to trample the next flowers that came deep into the mud of the gutter, and watch over her young mistress vigilantly if that lordly man ever presented himself at the door.

But Lydia watched in vain. She gathered no flowers from the vestibule floor, at early morning, during the week after Bertha’s first ball, but kept her eyes, with their searching cross glances, on the young mistress, and saw that she drooped.

Then she began to relent, and fell to mourning over the sadness which was falling on this other young heart, and, spite of the danger, she would gladly have found the vestibule choked up with flowers rather than encounter the wistful look which Bertha cast on her when she opened her bedroom door in the morning.

One day, struck with compassion by that expectant look, the girl rifled her tin bank of all its pennies, ran to a flower stand in Broadway, while Bertha was languidly dressing herself, and came back carrying a cluster of moss rose-buds and violets, which she had taken apart and rearranged on her way home, like those she had studied of late.

When Bertha saw these flowers, the shining masses of hair she was braiding fell down half way to the floor, and, covered with this burnished mantle, she ran toward the girl, took the blossoms from her, and, turning away, covered them with kisses, while she pretended to be inhaling their perfume.

Lydia saw this, and, marking the radiance of that glowing face, began to mourn that she had not another bank to break, and was going away very thoughtful.

Bertha called her back.

“Where did you find these? And when?” she questioned, while her lips parted with involuntary smiles.

“At the door, miss—just like they came always.”

“Not early?”

“Yes, marm—very early.”

“Strange!” said Bertha. “I looked out at daybreak—for I did not sleep well—and saw nothing.”

“Oh, that was _too_ early, miss! He never comes like that.”

“But I sat at the window a long time—the air was so pure—and never lost sight of the door at all.”

Lydia’s eyes became restless, and shot glances across each other like rival archers.

“It might be later than I thought—who knows? They was just laid down softly in the vestabuler, and I didn’t look at the clock.”

Bertha was too happy for much cross-questioning, and Lydia seemed restless to be gone.

“You have been a good girl, Lydia—so kind to mamma. I haven’t given you anything in a long time. Here is some money—or, if you like it better, take one of my neck ribbons.”

“I’ll take the money, please!” cried Lydia, seizing upon the finances with the greed of a “ring-leader.” “It’ll be more useful all round.”

Bertha half emptied her pretty portemonnaie into Lydia’s hand. She was in haste to be alone with her flowers.

“This will settle for two more,” muttered Lydia, darling a pleasant cross-fire of glances into her hand as she went down the stairs; “for that girl in Broadway needn’t expect me to pay profit, because I won’t.”

Bertha laid her flowers upon the dressing-table, and stooped forward to kiss away their perfume, as she twisted all that rich mass of hair into braids, bands, and curls, arranging them on her head helmet-shaped. Then she filled a vase with water, and put their stems tenderly into the crystal liquid, wishing they could live forever.

How good this man was to forgive her haughty independence! No wonder he thought she would not care to dance with another, having once been his choice and received the homage of words that might have been addressed to an empress! How superior he was to the crowd, which seemed born to exalt him by the contrast! Gifted with rare genius and such superb manliness, he had selected her from all that throng of lovely women, and lifted her almost to a level with himself! How had she requited all this noble kindness? By doing the only thing he had suggested that she should avoid!

These thoughts had filled Bertha’s heart with self-reproach every hour since the ball. Now they came upon her with double force. She forgot that Waldon had attempted both to win and force her into a confession of love before he had made one himself; she forgot everything except that this man was the most splendid creature she had ever seen, and that he still thought of her.

Bertha went down-stairs that morning radiant. Mrs. Canfield wondered at the change; for all that week the girl had been fitful as a bird whose nest is threatened, and settled at nothing. Sometimes she would make a dash at the piano, fill the house with a flood of music, and break off suddenly, with her hands on the keys, lost in thought; sometimes she would sit by the window, with a wistful, far-away look, and start, as if from a dream, when any one spoke to her.

The elder lady saw all this, and remembering her own wayward girlhood, said in her heart:

“It is only the restlessness of youth. This party has unsettled my child. It is but natural.”

But Lydia, who was sharp as steel and quick as lightning, understood all these signs better. She had not carried flowers up to Bertha’s chamber so often without asking mental questions, and these questions she had solved by rising early and watching in the area.

Now Lydia spent all her leisure time in reading certain cheap novels that a literary shoemaker, who had cast favorable eyes on the rather good-looking cook, brought into the basement, and from this source gained an impression of the qualities requisite for a heroine of romance. Of course, such persons were never described as taking a youngish and rather nervous mother into confidence; that, as Lydia justly reasoned, would be likely to break up the story at once; and such heroines usually had faithful attendants, who were ready to be torn to pieces by wild horses rather than betray secrets. No rampant steeds appeared in this case, but Lydia was not the less silent on that account. She was not only faithful but inventive, and out of all this came that generous fraud about the bouquet which had sent Bertha down to her mother, that morning, happy as a humming bird with his bill in the white heart of a jessamine flower.

Most young ladies have a little romance of the heart about nightfall, even in a great city. There is something in the soft purple shadows that settle upon the tiny gardens, linked together and lined out by snow-white fences, that give vines and blossoms breathing space between our houses, which take a faint shadow of nature, and suggest sadness.

Bertha had drawn aside her snow-white window curtains, and was looking out on a scene like this, where Virginia creepers, curtaining the back doors, blazed like a red sunset, while the last purple clusters hung amid the crisp leaves of the grape-vines, and many-tinted chrysanthemums were gathered in stocks of dusky leaves and starry blossoms in the hardy richness of late autumn. She had been expecting something all day—something of which that tuft of flowers had been as a rosy dawn; but night was coming on, and she stood there alone, sad and disheartened.

All at once some one pulled at her dress, and before she could turn, the voice of Lydia came over her shoulder in a breathless whisper:

“He’s come—I tell you he’s come!”

“Who—who?”

“Him—that’s his name, he told me to give it to you. I’d rather die than have you take it; but there it is!”

Bertha took the card, and read it by the waning light—“Russell Waldon.”

“Where is he—where is mamma?” cried Bertha, trying to strike a match, and failing from a woful unsteadiness of the hand. “Do look, Lydia, and tell me if my hair is all right! Oh, mercy! I wish you had given me a little more time—you have not told me where my mother is?”

“Gone to church with the lady next door—lecture I mean, and for my part I’m glad of it. I don’t want to see her fainting.”

Bertha looked as if she were glad, too.

“In the parlor, gas a-blazing—I saw to that. Handsome as a picter of Gineral Scott, he is, and loves to kill folks just as much. Don’t let him read to you now, Miss Bertha, don’t!”

Away went Lydia down the back-stairs, and Bertha swept her rustling draperies in an opposite direction, but paused in the hall, with one hand on her heart, gathering courage.

How magnificently the man’s face lighted up when Bertha appeared. He came toward her, extending one hand with the most winning frankness; but searched each expression of her features keenly all the time.

She gave him her hand; he hesitated a moment, then lifted it to his lips, and left a burning spot upon its whiteness, and a flood of color on her face.

“Forgive me if I could not stay from you longer,” he said.

The girl had thought of fifty things that she would say to this man, if he ever gave her a chance; but now all the words she had premeditated seemed broken up into delicious sighs.

“I hope this is not an unpardonable intrusion,” he added, well pleased by her blushing silence.

“An intrusion!” she replied, at last; “that is impossible. Surely you cannot doubt a welcome anywhere!”

“Ah, but here I crave something more than a welcome!”

Bertha felt her heart beat loudly. Why was her visitor always attempting to commit her by some expression of interest?

Her bewilderment amused him. He asked no better proof of interest than the color in her cheek, which was warm and red as a peach in the noonday sun. With easy grace he swerved from the subject that embarrassed her, and spoke of the ball; from that he turned to some book she was reading, fastening her interest by his keen appreciation of the author, adding grander ideas of his own which startled her with their originality. As her brain kindled, the throbbing at her heart grew less. She felt almost as if this man were a being to demand worship, but give nothing in return. Her own fancy found all its native brightness, and met his wit as flint strikes steel; but she was quite unconscious that her share in the conversation was in any way remarkable. Waldon felt this, and gloried in a power which enabled him to bring the diamond sparks uppermost in a mind so fresh and vigorous that for once he felt himself mated, as strong men love to be matched by delicate women. Waldon was too well versed in social life to remain in any company long enough to risk the possibility of being parted with willingly. After an hour he arose to go. Bertha fairly caught her breath.

“So soon,” she said, almost imploringly.

“More than an hour, I think,” he answered, smiling.

Bertha had told him where her mother was. It formed no part of his wish to see this lady yet, and it was nearly time for the lecture to close—she must not find him there.

Bertha would not urge him to stay. She, too, shrank from an explanation which might alarm her mother, who remained quite unconscious of the intimacy which had rooted itself so deeply between these two young people.

Waldon held her hand in his; a smile dimpled her mouth; she tried to look him fairly in the face, but his glance met hers, and overpowered it; the dusky lashes fell; she drooped shyly before him, like a bird charmed.

“Good-night—I shall see you again.”

Again! again! that word haunted Bertha’s dreams all night.

On his way home, Waldon met Edward Lane, and took his arm.

“Lane, lose no time in finding out the points I gave you. I have seen that girl again. She drives me beyond myself. Her graceful wit outmatches her beauty. I have no patience to wait. Get me information, or I shall do something imprudent.”

“I am on the track—you shall know all about it soon,” said Lane, and they parted.