Chapter IV: Mrs. Fred Thurston

Bertha waited anxiously for an answer to her letter; when it did not come she grew very nervous and restless, and began to lose faith in the new moon and her theosophical presentiments, as she called her convictions of what was coming to pass. A feeling of dread began also to haunt her lest, after all, the man with the bald head, who called her Berthy, might be the only alternative to save the homestead from the auctioneer’s hammer. But the letter came at last and changed her whole future. There was an interview with her employers, who, having received Mrs. Hallam’s letter of inquiry, were not surprised. Although sorry to part with her, they readily agreed to advance whatever money should be needed in October, without other security than her note, which she was to leave with her father.

There was another interview with Mr. Sinclair, who at its close had a very sorry look on his face and a suspicion of suppressed tears in his voice as he said, “It is hard to give you up, and I could have made you so happy, and your father, too. Good-bye, and God bless you. Mrs. Thurston will be disappointed. Her heart was quite set upon having you for a neighbor, as you would be if you were my wife. Good-bye.”

The Mrs. Thurston alluded to was Bertha’s cousin Louie, from the South, who, four years before had spent part of a summer at the Homestead. She had then gone to Newport, where she captured Fred Thurston, a Boston millionaire, who made love to her hotly for one month, married her the next, swore at her the next, and in a quiet but decided manner had tyrannized over and bullied her ever since. But he gave her all the money she wanted, and, as that was the principal thing for which she married him, she bore her lot bravely, became in time a butterfly of fashion, and laughed and danced and dressed, and went to lunches and teas and receptions and dinners and balls, taking stimulants to keep her up before she went, and bromide, or chloral, or sulfonal, to make her sleep when she came home. But all this told upon her at last, and after four years of it she began to droop, with a consciousness that something was sapping her strength and stealing all her vitality. “Nervous prostration,” the physician called it, recommending a change of air and scene, and, as a trip to Europe had long been contemplated by Mr. Thurston, he had finally decided upon a summer in Switzerland, and was to sail some time in July. Mrs. Thurston was very fond of her relatives at the Homestead, and especially of Bertha, who when she was first married was a pupil in Charlestown Seminary and spent nearly every Sunday with her. After a while, however, and for no reason whatever except that on one or two occasions he had shown his frightful temper before her, Mr. Thurston conceived a dislike for Bertha and forbade Louie’s inviting her so often to his house, saying he did not marry her poor relations. This put an end to any close intimacy between the cousins, and although Bertha called occasionally she seldom met Louie’s husband, who, after she entered the employment of Swartz & Co., rarely recognized her in the street. Bread-winners were far beneath his notice, and Bertha was a sore point between him and his wife, who loved her cousin with the devotion of a sister and often wrote, begging her to come, if only for an hour.

But Bertha was too proud to trespass where the master did not want her, and it was many weeks since they had met. She must go now and say good-bye. And after Mr. Sinclair left her she walked along Commonwealth Avenue to her cousin’s elegant house, which stood side by side with one equally handsome, of which she had just refused to be mistress. But she scarcely glanced at it, or, if she did, it was with no feeling of regret as she ran up the steps and rang the bell.

Mrs. Thurston was at home and alone, the servant said, and Bertha, who went up unannounced, found her in her pleasant morning room, lying on a couch in the midst of a pile of cushions, with a very tired look upon her lovely face.

“Oh, Bertha,” she exclaimed, springing up with outstretched hands, as her cousin came in, “I am so glad to see you! Where have you kept yourself so long? And when are you coming to be my neighbor? I saw Mr. Sinclair last week, and he still had hopes.”

Bertha replied by telling what the reader already, knows, and adding that she had come to say good-bye, as she was to sail in two weeks.

“Oh, how could you refuse him, and he so kind and good, and so fond of you?” Louie said.

Bertha, between whom and her cousin there were no domestic secrets, replied:

“Because I do not love him, and never can, good and kind as I know him to be. With your experience, would you advise me to marry for money?”

Instantly a shadow came over Louie’s face, and she hesitated a little before she answered:

“Yes, and no; all depends upon the man, and whether you loved some one else. If you knew he would swear at you, and call you names, and storm before the servants, and throw things,—not at you, perhaps, but at the side of the house,—I should say no, decidedly; but if he were kind, and good, and generous, like Charlie Sinclair, I should say yes. I did so want you for my neighbor. Can’t you reconsider? Who is Mrs. Hallam, I wonder? I know some Hallams, or a Hallam,—Reginald. He lives in New York, and it seems to me his aunt’s name is Mrs. Carter Hallam. Let me tell you about him. I feel like talking of the old life in Florida, which seems so long ago.”

She was reclining again among the cushions, with one arm under her head, a far-away look in her eyes, and a tone in her voice as if she were talking to herself rather than to Bertha.

“You know my father lived in Florida,” she began, “not far from Tallahassee, and your mother lived over the line in Georgia. Our place was called Magnolia Grove, and there were oleanders and yellow jasmine and Cherokee roses everywhere. This morning when I was so tired and felt that life was not worth the living, I fancied I was in my old home again, and I smelled the orange blossoms and saw the magnolias which bordered the avenue to our house, fifty or more, in full bloom, and Rex and I were playing under them. His uncle’s plantation joined ours, and when his mother died in Boston he came to live with her brother at Grassy Spring. He was twelve and I was nine, and I had never played with any boy before except the negroes, and we were so fond of each other. He called me his little sweetheart, and said he was going to marry me when he was older. When he was fourteen, his uncle on his father’s side, a Mr. Hallam, from New York, sent for him, and he went away, promising to come back again when he was a man. We wrote to each other a few times, just boy and girl letters, you know. He called me Dear Louie and I called him Dear Rex, and then, I hardly know why, that chapter of my life closed, never to be reopened. Grandfather, who owned Magnolia Grove, lost nearly everything during the war, so that father, who took the place after him, was comparatively poor, and when he died we were poorer still, mother and I, and had to sell the plantation and move to Tallahassee, where we kept boarders,—people from the North, mostly, who came there for the winter. I was sixteen then, and I tried to help mother all I could. I dusted the rooms, and washed the glass and china, and did a lot of things I never thought I’d have to do. When I was eighteen Rex Hallam came to Jacksonville and ran over to see us. If he had been handsome as a boy of fourteen, he was still handsomer as a man of twenty-one, with what in a woman would be called a sweet graciousness of manner which won all hearts to him; but as he is a man I will drop the sweet and say that he was kind alike to everybody, old and young, rich and poor, and had the peculiar gift of making every woman think she was especially pleasing to him, whether she were married or single, pretty or otherwise. He stopped with us a week, and because I was so proud and rebellious against our changed circumstances, and so ashamed to have him find me dusting and washing dishes, I was cold and stiff towards him, and our old relations were not altogether resumed, although he was very kind. Sometimes for fun he helped me dust, and once he wiped the dishes for me and broke a china teapot, and then he went away and I never saw him again till last summer, when I met him at Saratoga. Fred, who was with him in college, introduced us to each other, supposing we were strangers. You ought to have seen the look of surprise on Rex’s face when Fred said, ‘This is my wife.’

“Why, Louie,” he exclaimed, “I don’t need an introduction to you,” then to my husband, “We are old friends, Louie and I;” and we told him of our early acquaintance.

“For a wonder, Fred did not seem a bit jealous of him, although savage if another man looked at me. Nor had he any cause, for Rex’s manner was just like a brother’s, but oh, such a brother! And I was so happy the two weeks he was there. We drove and rode and danced and talked together, and never but once did he refer to the past. Then, in his deep, musical voice, the most musical I ever heard in a man, he said, ‘I thought you were going to wait for me,’ and I answered, ‘I did wait, and you never came.’

“That was all; but the night before he went away he was in our room and asked for my photograph, which was lying upon the table. He had quite a collection, he said, and would like to add mine to it, and I gave it to him. Fred knew it and was willing, but since then, when he is in one of his moods, he taunts me with it, and says he knew I was in love with Rex all the time,—that he saw it in my face, and that Rex saw it, too, and despised me for it while pretending to admire me, and because he knew Rex despised me and he could trust him, he allowed me full liberty just to see how far I would go and not compromise myself. I do not believe it of Rex: he never despised any woman; but it is hard to hear such things, and sometimes when Fred is worse than usual and I have borne all I can bear, I go away and cry, with an intense longing for something different, which might perhaps have come to me if I had waited, and I hear Rex’s boyish voice just as it sounded under the magnolias in Florida, where we played together and pelted each other with the white petals strewing the ground.

“I am not false to Fred in telling this to you, who know about my domestic life, which, after all, has some sunshine in it. Fred is not always cross. Every one has a good and a bad side, a Jekyll and Hyde, you know, and if Fred has more Hyde than Jekyll, it is not his fault, perhaps. I try him in many ways. He says I am a fool, and that I only care for his money, and if he gives me all I want I ought to be satisfied. Just now he is very good,—so good, in fact, that I wonder if he isn’t going to die. I believe he thinks I am, I am so weak and tired. I have not told you, have I, that we, too, are going to Europe before long? Switzerland is our objective point, but if I can I will persuade Fred to go to Aix, where you will be. That will be jolly. I wonder if your Mrs. Hallam can be Rex’s aunt.”

“Did you ever see her?” Bertha asked, and Louie replied:

“Only in the distance. She was in Saratoga with him, but at another hotel. I heard she was a very swell woman with piles of money, and that when young she had made shoes and worked in a factory, or something.”

“How shocking!” Bertha said, laughingly, and Louie rejoined:

“Don’t be sarcastic. You know I don’t care what she used to do. Why should I, when I have dusted and washed dishes myself, and waited on a lot of Northern boarders, with my proud Southern blood in hot rebellion against it? If Mrs. Hallam made shoes or cloth, what does it matter, so long as she is rich now and in the best society? She is no blood relation to Rex, who is a gentleman by birth and nature both. I hope Mrs. Carter is his aunt, for then you will see him; and if you do, tell him I am your cousin, but not how wretched I am. He saw a little in Saratoga, but not much, for Fred was very guarded. Hark! I believe I hear him coming.”

There was a bright flush on her cheeks as she started up and began to smooth the folds of her dress and to arrange her hair.

“Fred does not like to see me tumbled,” she said, just as the portière was drawn aside and her husband entered the room.

He was a tall and rather fine-looking man of thirty, with large, fierce black eyes and an expression on his face and about his mouth indicative of an indomitable will and a temper hard to meet. He had come in, he said, to take Louie for a drive, as the day was fine and the air would do her good; and he was so gracious to Bertha that she felt sure the Jekyll mood was in the ascendant. He asked her if she was still with Swartz & Co., and listened with some interest while Louie told him of her engagement with Mrs. Carter Hallam, and when she asked if that lady was Rex’s aunt, he replied that she was, adding that Rex’s uncle had adopted him as a son and had left a large fortune.

Then, turning to Bertha, he said, “I congratulate you on your prospective acquaintance with Rex Hallam. He is very susceptible to female charms, and quite indiscriminate in his attentions. Every woman, old or young, is apt to think he is in love with her.”

He spoke sarcastically, with a meaning look at his wife, whose face was scarlet. Bertha was angry, and, with a proud inclination of her head, said to him:

“It is not likely that I shall see much of Mr. Reginald Hallam. Why should I, when I am only his aunt’s hired companion, and have few charms to attract him?”

“I am not so sure of that,” Fred said, struck as he had never been before with Bertha’s beauty, as she stood confronting him.

She was a magnificent-looking girl, who, given a chance, would throw Louie quite in the shade, he thought, and under the fascination of her beauty he became more gracious than ever, and asked her to drive with them and return to lunch.

“Oh, do,” Louie said. “It is ages since you were here.”

But Bertha declined, as she had shopping to do, and in the afternoon was going home to stay until it was time to report herself to Mrs. Hallam. Then, bidding them good-bye, she left the house and went rapidly down the avenue.