Chapter LXXIV: On the Log Bridge

“And you saw him?”

“Yes, Bertha.”

“Did he—did he speak of me?”

“More than once.”

“Kindly—regretfully? Oh, tell me every word that was said! I do so hunger and thirst for one little word! Remember, you promised solemnly to tell me everything.”

“I know, dear; but that is difficult when things are implied rather than expressed. Waldon certainly spoke of you.”

“Yes! yes!”

“And so did Mary Noel; but she evidently knows nothing, and is, beside, a precious little goose! I wonder a girl all puff and gossamer, like that, could have been your bosom friend. Bertha, never were two creatures more unlike.”

“Perhaps—I dare say. But do tell me; I am not patient, you know.”

“Well, I have promised foolishly, I think now, and will do my best. I led him to the subject—kept down all my dislike, for I detest him—and asked, almost point blank, what the trouble was between you. He answered vaguely—said nothing against you—”

“Against me! How could he?”

“But spoke of your engagement as positively at an end. Poor child! how white your lips are! I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it! The man is so unworthy, so absolutely vile!”

Bertha protested against the charge with all the force of her sinking heart.

“No! no! it is _not_ that. Something has arisen that we do not comprehend, and he is too honorable to speak.”

“Too honorable! the ingrate! the coward! Bertha, diseases exist that cannot be cured, save by cutting off a limb. It takes a wise surgeon, they tell me, to know just when and how to cure in this desperate way. I am not that. Your clinging faith in this man shocks me. Yet I can understand it too well! too well!”

“Do not speak ill of him again, dear friend,” said Bertha, laying her hand on Mrs. Forbes’ arm, and lifting those great, beseeching eyes to her face. “I know how kind your meaning is. You think that I could give him up with less pain, believing him unworthy; but that is not so. I would rather, a thousand times, resign him to a happier woman, even _her_, than think him, in anything, less perfect—less deserving of such idolatry as I have felt—still feel—for him. No, no! some wicked thing has come between us which you have been unable to fathom.”

Mrs. Forbes answered nothing. She had no heart to persist in the truth against the sublime faith which possessed this noble girl. Knowing too well that half the value and beauty of a woman’s life is torn away when she is first convinced that the man she loves is mean and unworthy, she absolutely feared the effect upon this proud, trusting, sensitive girl. But something must be said. The scene she had witnessed at the dinner party must reach Bertha, sooner or later.

“You promised to tell me all,” said Bertha, wondering at this hesitation. “Have you done so?”

“No, Bertha; something else happened at the table after I left. There was some discussion—some drinking of toasts—in which your name was mentioned. Then Waldon openly disclaimed his engagement, and declared his approaching marriage to Miss Noel.”

“What—what—in a crowd!—before strangers!” gasped Bertha.

“Several young men were present, among them Mr. Hyde. Do you know him?”

“Yes. He is _his_ bosom friend, and adores him like a woman!”

“Is he your friend?”

“I do not know. God help me! I cannot say that I have a friend on earth!”

“At any rate, he seemed to act as such,” answered Mrs. Forbes, forgiving the implied doubt of herself unasked; “for when Fletcher proclaimed himself responsible as your friend, and demanded an explanation of the treatment you had received, this gentleman sustained him, I think.”

“That is strange. I thought he did not like me. But the explanation—did he give one?”

“Bertha, he said that no gentleman could many you without dishonor.”

Bertha turned to marble; face and neck, hand and lips, hardened into a deathly white, then, as a statue reels from its base, she fell slowly sideways. Mrs. Forbes caught her with both arms, or she would have fallen prone on the logs of the bridge where they had met and conversed.

“Sam—Celia! Great Heavens! will no one come! Celia—Celia! this way—bring something that holds water! Stop fluttering about the door, I tell you, and come at once!”

In answer to this cry, Celia came running down from the house with a calabash in her hand, calling back:

“Ho, Sam, yer ’fernal lazy nigger, what yer ’bout, when Miss Ally hollers murder?”

Sam, who was gathering sweet corn from his garden patch, dropped the green ears from his arm, and ran after his wife, who found Mrs. Forbes seated on the great side log of the bridge, holding what seemed like a corpse in her arms.

Down through the tangled vines Celia tore her way to the inlet, and filling her calabash, hurried back to the bridge just as Sam came up.

“Dare you am, standing like a stump, and doin’ noffin’, an’ de young lady done gone dead! Hole dat, thar!”

Sam took the calabash while Celia dipped both hands in it and dashed the water over that deathly face.

“Is she dead—is she quite dead?” questioned Mrs. Forbes, who was almost as white as the poor girl she held.

“Dead! Goramighty, no! She’ll come to, Miss Ally, and would right off, if it wasn’t for dis lazy ole nigger, as won’t hole de calibosh perpendicelum. Dare now, she am winken her eyelashes—dat last swash ob water done it. How am yer, mis? How does yer feel, honey?”

Bertha opened her eyes, vaguely at first, then with a look of wild wonder.

“What is the matter?” she said, lifting one hand to her wet hair. “Have I been in the water?”

“You have fainted, dear. I was telling you something, and you fell,” whispered Mrs. Forbes, kissing that damp forehead upon which her tears dropped. “I was frightened, it was so like death, Bertha!”

Bertha turned a little in the kind arms that held her, and, for a few moments, lay gazing into that kind face.

“I remember now,” she said, after a little time; “but my mind won’t receive the thing you said—it is too terrible!”

“It is true, Bertha. What he meant I cannot tell; but that was what Waldon said.”

Bertha looked jealously at the old people. She could not endure that they should hear that much of the shame that had been put upon her; but their kindness made her grateful even then, and trying to smile, she said to old Celia:

“I am better now. There—I will sit here a while by the side of your mistress. You can go to the house now.”

“Come along, ole man, and don’t yer be all day ’bout gitting dat green corn—come!”

Sam turned obediently, and followed his wife, who went toward the house, swinging her calabash by the neck, and scolding the poor old fellow all the time for coming away from the corn patch, when he “wasn’t wanted, no more than a chicken wanted two heads.”

Bertha had gently released herself from the support of her friend, and sat down on the log beside her.

“I had no father, no brother there, to ask what those cruel words meant,” she said, in a low, dreary voice. “Oh, it is hard to be fatherless! and now I have no mother—no human being in the wide world strong enough to tear away this mystery from the man I was to have married. Oh, Mrs. Forbes, some one must have slandered me to him fearfully! But how could he believe it without breaking his heart! Did he look ill?—did he seem to have suffered much?”

Mrs. Forbes was out of patience. Would the blind love of this young creature never permit her to understand.

“I saw no appearance of suffering, and you were not altogether left without defence.”

“You did not observe it, very likely, for he has a god-like power of self-control; but I know the generous, sensitive nature under it all. It breaks out, now and then, to the world, through his poetry; but to understand it well, one must have loved him. Oh, my friend, he suffered terribly before he could force himself to believe the thing he said! What wicked, wicked person can have imposed on him so?”

“I said you were not altogether left without defence,” said Mrs. Forbes, out of all patience. “When Waldon made this disgraceful charge, one man at the table dashed a glass of wine in his face, and called him a liar.”

“Called him a liar? Who was the man?”

“My brother, Egbert Fletcher.”

“And he is alive? Waldon did not kill him on the spot?”

“No, that would have been dangerous; but I think he will try and get revenge in another way.”

“A duel—you do not mean that?”

“Yes, Bertha, I do mean that. One of these men must fall.”

Bertha arose, looking drearily toward the house.

“I must go. It seems as if I were dying!”