Chapter LXVII: The Answer at Last

One hope kept Bertha from sinking under her passionate grief. She could take no comfort from the subdued sorrow of her grandparents, who had learned how to suffer and be still. Deeper and more bitter anguish than death ever brings had taught these people how to meet even this great affliction with Christian patience. They suffered, but with a gentle submission more touching than the stormy rebellion with which Bertha wrestled with the inevitable. She, in the exaction of her great sorrow, reproached even that dove-like old woman, in her heart, for want of feeling, and thought how easy it was for the aged to give up their loved ones, because of their own nearness to the grave. So, mistaking the deepest and most holy sorrow that man ever knows for something like apathy, the girl refused to be comforted by that kind, gentle voice, so pathetic in its tremulous age, which she understood in later years, but not then.

“They do not know how I suffer. They are old, and cannot feel as I do,” she would say to Lydia, when the girl became almost her equal in the quick fellowship of mutual bereavement. “It seems to me almost as if they did not care. But one is coming who will understand it all, for _he_ knows and feels everything.”

Then Lydia would turn away with mingled sadness and loathing, but give no answer. She was eating the bitter fruit of knowledge.

After a while Bertha began to look for the arrival of her lover. Day after day she watched the train come in, with longing impatience, but it brought no Waldon and no letter. What was the reason? Had Waldon left Virginia? or by some chance had her letter failed to reach its destination? She wrote again, directing to New York, but still Lydia haunted the post-office without avail, and the train passed, hooting at her disappointment like a demon.

One day Bertha became passionately impatient. Lydia should stay at home. She needed a long walk; those close rooms stifled her. The man would be more likely to search his letters over for her. Of course, Lydia asked him timidly, and he did not care.

The mail was scarcely in that day, when an eager face looking out from a cloud of black crape appeared at the post-office window, and a voice so thralled by anxiety that it scarcely rose above a whisper, asked if the mail brought any letters for Miss Canfield—Bertha Canfield.

Yes, there was a letter; the handwriting was a little indistinct, but that must be Bertha Canfield.

Bertha reached forth her hand for the letter. It was his writing. He was coming. This was but the forerunner of something still nearer her heart.

She walked away rapidly, holding the letter in her hand. A longing to devour its contents took away her breath. She panted with intense desire rather than fatigue. Some wagons passed her on the road, going to the depot; then a workman appeared with a tin pail in his hand. She longed to sweep them all from the highway. Would they never let her be alone?

At last, just before she came in sight of the farm-house, these persons had drifted out of her way. She drew a deep breath, leaned against the stone wall, and broke open the letter. Her black glove had stained it a little, which troubled her just for an instant as a bad sign. In the midst of her impatience, she stopped to kiss Waldon’s name before she began to read. Then she held it open against the stones with one hand, brushed her thick-coming tears away with the other, and gathered in the first words:

“MY DEAR MISS CANFIELD:”

She caught her breath, forced the paper tightly down to the stone with both hands, and read on:

“I cannot answer the letter which has just reached me as your own
noble nature has a right to expect, because it is no longer my
privilege to bring support or comfort in your time of distress. I
cannot explain how this gulf has been dug between us, or why it is
impossible that any power can ever bridge it over. One thing I may
reveal, and will. The fault belongs neither to you nor me. More, I
have pledged myself never to reveal to you. Indeed, my own judgment
tells me it would be far better that you should never know. Enough
that we are parted—all the sweet hopes, all the clinging love—but I
forbear. Why lacerate your proud heart or my own by an allusion to
what we have been and hoped to be? The ground is cut away from under
our feet. We are torn apart by the hand of one already passed to
judgment. Let the dead past bury the dead. Enough that you and I are
separated forever.

“Not knowing all that I am forbidden to tell, there yet may linger in
your heart some unbelief in the stern necessity that has torn your
life from mine—some vague hope that time or a miracle can change it.
Fearing this, and acting from a solemn sense of duty, I have placed a
barrier against all such possibilities. We can never meet as we have
done again. In order to make this inevitable I have battled against
all weakness, and for your sake more than my own turned resolutely
from the past. My honor demanded it. The great future which lies
before a public man like myself demanded it. Your own peace of mind
demanded the sacrifice, and I have made it. Bertha, I am engaged to
another—a woman who loves me as you loved me, even perhaps with a
deeper abandonment, because all the strength of her gentle nature
concentrates in the one word—love. Bertha, when we meet again, I shall
be a married man. I hope then and now, there will be friendship
between us. Nothing need prevent that, nothing should prevent it, for
the lady I am pledged to marry is Mary Noel, your own friend.

“Farewell. It is our destiny to say this cruel word.

“RUSSELL WALDON.”

Like a wild colt which the lassoo has missed, Bertha fled toward the house, holding down her black veil tightly, that no one might see her face, and crushing the letter in the fierce grasp of her hand.

Lydia came forth to meet her.

“Turn back!” she said, sharply. “Pack up some things; we are going a journey.”