Chapter LXXI: The Lost Dream

“Bertha! Bertha!”

For a moment Waldon was beside himself—all the broad lands of Willow Bend, the mansion gleaming with lights, and the girl who could make him master of them, were nothing to him. He fairly hated the things for which he had sold himself and murdered another. All his old passion for the beautiful woman who had fled from him blazed up with a burning thirst to reconquer her, and escape the pink and white beauty who waited for him so impatiently on the veranda. He could see her passing in and out through the French windows like a drifting cloud, while the other had pushed him from her with angry, burning words, and leaped, as it seemed, into the very depths of the river.

Waldon went close to the very edge of the water, and looked up and down in a vain search for some boat. But he saw nothing. Bertha’s tiny craft was sweeping down the shadows of the bank. She used no oars, but sat in the stern with her face covered, sobbing as if her heart would break, and whispering to herself:

“He loves me yet! he loves me yet!”

Had Waldon caught one glimpse of the boat, he might have followed it, for difficulties always made him rash; but he saw nothing, and believed, for a while, that Bertha had drowned herself to escape the rude caresses with which she might have deemed herself insulted. Shocked by the fear, he fell upon his knees and sobbed like a girl.

A faint sound from the river brought Waldon to his feet again. Lydia had taken up the oars, and down through the rippling silver of the moonlight that little craft was going, with arrowy speed, carrying Bertha away from him through that path of light, while he stood his old self again, wondering at the sudden passion that had so nearly swept him away from the path he had laid out for his future.

Waldon strode into the moonlight, and walked up and down the bank, congratulating himself that this one great temptation had been broken up by the girls own act. He looked, out upon the noble landscape over which the dew glittered like a mantle of jewels; groves, pastures, off-lying farms and houses for working men, stretched up and down the river, glorified by floating mist that grew luminous in the moonlight. His vision could not reach the extent of property that might be his in exchange for the girl who had just left him.

“Fool! fool!” he exclaimed, sneering at his better self, “for so many idiotic minutes, while the thrill of her voice, and the glamour of her beauty was upon me, I was ready to give this up and not think it a sacrifice. I wonder what it is that comes over me sometimes, and makes almost a superior being of me! More than once it has marred my fortunes. This time I will keep the angel under foot. It always grows powerful when that girl is by me. She must not come near me again. I wish her no harm—Heaven knows I have down her enough—but if she struggles, I must throw up a wall of brass between us. If people will have explanations, I must give them. No romance or sentiment shall swamp me with all this in view!”

“Waldon, Mr. Waldon, do come in! I’m sure the damp air is not good for you, and it looks so strange. People will see me sitting all alone, as if you had given up caring for me; and—and I think you have.”

“Foolish child,” said Waldon, gathering the cloud of white muslin, from which this complaint came, close to him with one arm. “I never loved you better in my life! The sight of this landscape inspires me with new emotions. How beautiful it is! I can never forget that you are the central figure, lady-bird.”

Waldon took a satanic pleasure in thus uttering, half-veiled, the value this girl was to him.

“Ah! now you are talking poetry. But why don’t you write it out for me? Writers always do when they care for one; but I have never had a single line, except—except—”

“Except what, lady-bird?”

“Except some lovely lines that Mr. Hyde slipped into my hand. He writes beautifully! Oh, what a naughty word, Mr. Waldon! I never heard you swear before. Let me go; it frightens me!”

In order to facilitate her going, Mary clung to Waldon’s arms with both hands, and laid her head partly on his bosom, where fresh oaths against young Hyde’s impudence were seething.

“Don’t be angry—forgive him, for my sake. One can’t help being loved, you know; and he, poor follow, has no idea about us!”

Waldon made no answer to this plaintive appeal, but strode into the house, half carrying the clinging loveliness to which he was more than ever pledged for life.

Meantime Bertha sat dreaming in that little boat, sometimes with her hands clasped and her eyes uplifted, full of troubled delight, as if a great hope had found birth in her heart. And this is what that hope was saying:

“He loves me—he loves me yet! Whatever the evil thing is, it has not conquered his love. That _she_ can never have!”

The boat swept downward, plowing up music from the silvery ripples, and Bertha’s heart beat time to the oars, while her eyelids closed over unshed tears, and her lips quivered with the thought of kisses he had so madly rained upon them. At first she had been angry and frightened by this impetuous outburst; but love is lenient to faults that prove its power, and while burning blushes came with the memory of his fault, she forgave it, because even that was a proof that his heart had never given her up.

Bertha had no plan in this—no definite hope that her broken life would ever again unite with that of the man who was to have been her husband; but those few sweet words singing at the bottom of her heart were enough for the hour—on the morrow reason would come and strangle them, like unfledged birds in a nest.

Lydia, who knew everything, saw the brightness of her young mistress’ face, and uttered faint moans as she bent to the oars—beyond that the girl never opened her lips.