Chapter XXIV: A Revelation for Bertha

THE weeks of winter dragged on; January wore itself out in fierce storms. February was a month of keen frost and bright sunshine, which reduced Bertha to the infliction of wearing coloured spectacles to keep from going blind, and then March came in with lengthening days and stormy winds which howled across the wastes, but bore on their gusty breath a welcome hint of the coming spring.

It had been a busy winter for Bertha. Time for writing had been made whenever other duties were not pressing, and her success had justified the time she had spent on the task. Four stories had been sold, and although three others had failed to find a market, she already knew enough about the literary life to feel sure that the setback of their rejection might be for her ultimate good. Meanwhile, she was intent on getting her first book into shape, although she guessed that it would be next winter before she could hope to finish it. All the same, it was something to work for and hope for, while already she was happy in thinking that she had really achieved something. The few dollars she had earned would keep her in pocket money until Tom would be able to pay her a salary again.

The joyfulness of feeling that she had found her work in the world and that she was of so much use, that one family, at least, would find it hard to do without her, was so great, that she was entirely content, and would not have changed places with anyone. Her letters to her sisters were so vigorous, bright, and breezy, that neither Anne nor Hilda could in the least understand the change in her, as their replies abundantly testified.

It was the last Sunday in March when Mrs. Smith drove her two children over to Duck Flats to spend the morning with Grace, so that Bertha might go to church. It was the first time since Christmas that Bertha had had a chance to go to meeting, and so the occasion was very much in the nature of a festival.

The morning was brilliantly fine, and on the south side of the house the icicles were melting in the sun, although when night came again it would most likely freeze as sharply as ever. Dicky and Molly were in wild spirits, for they were going to church with Bertha, and the three tucked themselves into the sledge and set off in good time, for they would not risk being late on an occasion like this. Somehow Bertha’s thoughts kept going to that Sunday last summer when she had taken the children to church, and Eunice had been so sure that disaster was coming. How soon the storm had come after that, and how truly awful the disaster had been!

Bertha shivered as she looked at the gleaming white landscape and thought of the bright hopes which lay buried underneath the snow, and she found herself hoping that Eunice would have no forebodings of evil to spoil this Sunday as it had done the other. But when she reached Pentland Broads it was to find that Eunice had gone to a distant farm to spend the day, in order that the mother of a large family might be able to go to church with her husband.

“Some of us would hardly get a chance to put our heads outside our doors all the winter, if neighbours and friends were not kind to us,” said Mrs. Jones to Bertha, in explaining the reason why Eunice was not at home.

“Everyone seems to be kind to each other here, I think,” said Bertha, and was conscious of a huge relief, because there was no Eunice present to foretell disaster. Of course it was very silly of her to be afraid, and at any other time she would have been really glad to see Eunice, who was her only close friend at Pentland Broads among a large number of acquaintances.

The service was over, and Bertha was tucking the sledge robes round the two children, when young Fricker came rushing up to her in a great state of excitement.

“Oh, I say, Miss Doyne, I am glad to see you here this morning. I spotted you in meeting, and thought my eyes were playing me a trick. I should have come over to see you this week, but as you are here this morning, why, I can tell you now. You remember that poor chap Bradgate who was taken bad on the sledge?”

“Oh, is he dead?” cried Bertha, in a tone that was much more tragic that she knew.

“No, I should say that the fellow has as many lives as a cat; at any rate, he has not come to the end of them yet,” returned Fricker, with a laugh, and then he pulled a thick letter out of his pocket, which he handed to Bertha. “But I want you to take this home with you and read it. You can return it at any time, only I think that it will interest you, because it turns out that Bradgate comes from Nova Scotia, and he has been about as all-round unfortunate as falls to the lot of most men.”

“How funny that there should be three of us here so close together, and only to find it out by accident that we all hail from Arcadia!” said Bertha; and then she asked, with a little hesitation in her tone, “I hope that Mr. Bradgate is really better now?”

“He’ll do, I fancy; but it beats me to think that he has been lying ill at Rownton all this time and I have never been near him, when, so to speak, he was one of my own people. I feel downright mean about it, though of course I did not know. However, I shall go over and see him next week if I can get away, and then I can give him my mother’s message that she sent in that letter,” and Fricker nodded towards the letter which he had given to Bertha.

“But if this concerns Mr. Bradgate, would you not rather that he saw it first?” she asked.

“I should not show him the letter, and the message I know by heart. You keep it, Miss Doyne, until I come for it. Hullo! this old horse of yours wants to run over me, and I’m too valuable to be turned into road metal just yet, so good morning!” Fricker stood aside and raised his hat as old Pucker dashed ahead, kicking up the snow in a fashion suggestive of a five-year-old, and actually squealing with delight at being in motion again.

Bertha tucked the letter into the inside pocket of her coat, and thought no more about it just then. The sun beat down in dazzling brilliancy, and her eyes ached from the glare, despite her coloured spectacles. But it was good to be out in the keen fresh air, and to know that the long winter was nearly over.

Dicky and Molly chattered like two young magpies all the way home, and if Bertha answered them in an abstracted fashion they did not notice it, so there was no great harm done, and she was able to enjoy the peace and rest of the long, monotonous drive in her own fashion. Mrs. Smith would not stay for dinner because her husband would be expecting her home, and when she had gone, Bertha’s first business was to get the midday meal ready, though by this time it was long past midday, and breakfast was a dim and distant memory.

Then came the delicious rest by the fire in the afternoon, while Grace told the children Bible stories, and Bertha had nothing to do but lean back in the rocking chair and think her own thoughts. The funny thing was that she did not then remember the letter which Fricker had given her; but then she was not thinking about him, or indeed anyone at Pentland Broads. It was later, when she had donned her working pinafore and gone out to the barn to milk the cow and feed the animals, that she suddenly remembered that the letter was still in the pocket of her coat.

“How stupid of me to forget! But then I have been stupid more or less all day to-day, I think,” she said to herself, as she pulled down a great armful of swamp hay for the cow, saw that Pucker was getting a comfortable supper, and attended to the other things which had to be done on Sunday as well as every other day in the week.

“I have brought a letter home to read, and I am going to forget all about it again unless you help me to remember,” she said to Grace, when she went in with the milk pail.

“I will not let you forget; and in return for my kindness in reminding you I shall want to see the letter, or at least to hear it read, unless indeed it is very particularly private,” replied Grace.

“It cannot be that, or Mr. Fricker would not have given it to me to read,” said Bertha. “I thought it was rather funny of him to bring it to me, but he seems to think that because we both come from Nova Scotia we ought to have a great deal in common. For my part, I don’t see that it follows; but he is such a nice, friendly boy, that it is too bad to snub him. And I fancy that he is homesick too, poor lad, so I am obliged to have a soft corner in my heart for him.”

“That is undoubtedly good for you. It makes your sympathies wider, and you can save the snubbing for Mr. Long when he comes home again. Fricker is happily too young to need it,” laughed Grace.

It was not until the children were all in bed that Bertha fetched the letter from the pocket of her thick driving-coat and, sitting down by Grace, proceeded to read it aloud.

It was a long epistle in a woman’s handwriting, signed Mary Fricker, and commencing “My dear son”. The first page was devoted to small items of family interest, just those things which a homesick boy would love to hear about, and then Mrs. Fricker plunged into the chief interest of her letter.

“I was very much interested by your letter telling us about the
shortage of food at Pentland Broads in the blizzard. That girl
Bertha Doyne was fine and courageous to leave such a helpless
household to drive the sledge over for you, and it must have
been maddening indeed to discover that it was not foodstuffs
after all. I am glad to hear that she comes from Nova Scotia. It
is fine to think that our little state can produce real live
heroines as well as a fictitious Evangeline. Now, I am going to
tell you something which will amaze you, and that is, the Edgar
Bradgate who got so mixed as to the sledges is from Nova Scotia
also, and, though not actually your kinsman, is so nearly
connected with our family that we may almost consider him one of
ourselves. He is stepson to Cousin Fanny’s husband, whom you do
not know, but who is a very good fellow. His name is Mallom, and
he came over to see us yesterday, when he told us of Edgar’s
long illness at the police barracks at Rownton. He told us, too,
of some of the things that unfortunate young man has battled
through, and really it made my heart ache. It seems that, when
Edgar was of age, there was a little money to come to him from
his dead mother’s estate. This he was induced to invest in a
company which speculated in land and real estate of various
kinds. They gave Edgar employment as a travelling agent, and he
was abroad a great deal in the interest of his firm. For a whole
year he was in Peru, then he went to Australia, and afterwards
he was for a long time in Prince Edward Island. But there was
treachery somewhere; the promoters feathered their own nests at
the cost of the agent and the shareholders. After the company
was wound up there was a meeting of shareholders at Paston, at
which Edgar was present, and he was set upon by the infuriated
people, who would persist in believing that he was entirely to
blame, although he was really innocent, and very much the victim
of the rascally promoters. He would have been severely mauled,
perhaps even killed, if he had not succeeded in slipping away in
a boat, intending to row himself some distance along shore and
then to strike inland to reach the rail. But he was always the
most unfortunate of creatures. His boat got wedged in those
Mestlebury rocks which they call the Shark’s Teeth, and he
himself would have been drowned if it had not been for the pluck
of a girl—a poor fisher girl, I think she was—who swam out
with a rope to his boat, and so he was towed to safety. It took
almost his last cent to reward the girl for what she had done
for him, and he had to walk seventy miles to Mr. Mallom’s house,
earning his food by doing chores, or going hungry when he could
not get a job. I wish that you would cultivate his acquaintance,
my dear boy, for he is the sort of man it is good for a fellow
to know—undaunted in disaster, falling only to rise again, he
is bound to succeed in the long run. It is easy to see how much
Mr. Mallom thinks of him, and the pride he has in him. But Edgar
Bradgate is proud, and rightly so. He will not live on his
stepfather, but will make his own way in the world or starve,
and that is the right spirit to show.”

“Oh, Grace, what shall I do? To think that I have been keeping Mr. Bradgate’s property from him for so many weeks, and he so poor; it makes me feel unutterably mean!” cried Bertha, with actual tears in her eyes, as she broke off from reading her letter. “But why, oh why did he not try to find me out to ask for his coat and what was in it?”

“I should not be surprised to know that in the trouble of having to escape in that fashion from the angry shareholders, he entirely forgot that he had left his valuables in an outside coat; it might even be that he forgot he had a coat with him at all. A man in peril of his life twice in one day might be forgiven a lapse of memory like that,” replied Grace, whose face showed a little pucker of anxiety, although she tried to speak as cheerfully as usual.

“Then I must remind him of it as speedily as possible, for no one can even guess how utterly thankful I shall be to get the wretched things out of my possession. If I write a letter to him to-night, I may get a chance to post it before the week is out,” said Bertha.

“But what can you say in your letter?” asked Grace, and now the pucker of anxiety showed more plainly than before.

“I think that I shall tell him straight out that I have valuable property belonging to him, and that the sooner he fetches it away the better I shall like it,” Bertha answered shortly, for the whole thing got upon her nerves.

“Oh, don’t do that!” cried Grace distressfully. “If you put a thing like that in black and white, I shall never dare to be left alone again, for I shall always be afraid that someone will come along to try and rob the house. As it is, there is no danger at all; for the most optimistic of thieves would hardly expect to find anything worth carrying away in the house of a hailed-out farmer.”

“What can I say, then?” asked Bertha. “You see I must ask him to come and fetch his property away, as I could not possibly send valuables like that through the post.”

“Could you not write to him and ask him if he would kindly come over to see you as soon as he is able to leave the police barracks? You might say that you had news of importance for him which you could not very well put in a letter. That would commit you to nothing, and if anyone else read it they would not be unduly enlightened,” said Grace.

“I might do that, certainly, although I should think that he will be mightily amazed, and perhaps a little disgusted, at receiving a letter of that description from a girl he knows nothing about,” said Bertha, shrugging her shoulders; for the letter written by Mrs. Fricker to her son had somehow left the impression that Mr. Bradgate was the sort of individual to be approached with respect.

“He will be surprised, probably; but as Mrs. Fricker speaks of him so highly, he is probably a gentleman, so he will do as you ask him, without unpleasant comment, and really I do not see how else you can hope to see him, unless you ask him to come here. Would you like to get Eunice to come and stay with me while someone drives you to Rownton?” asked Grace.

“That would certainly be simpler than dragging a man who is an invalid so many miles across the snow,” said Bertha.

“Write your letter to Eunice instead, then.” Grace had quite an eager note in her tone now, for in her way she was quite as eager as Bertha to get rid of that little case of dull-looking stones which had been in the house so long.

Bertha wrote the letter, but it was Wednesday before there was any chance of getting it sent to Pentland Broads, and it was the following Sunday before she received a reply, and then Eunice wrote that it would be a week before she could get away, as Mrs. Humphries was in bed with bronchitis, and there was no one else to take the post office from her shoulders.

“It seems as if I were fated to keep those wretched stones,” said Bertha, when she had read the letter from Eunice.

“Only one more week to wait, dear, so have patience,” replied Grace cheerfully, and neither she nor Bertha even dreamed of all that case was to cost in care and trouble before it reached its rightful owner.