bettina had been in her old home a week—long enough to recuperate from her journey and begin to take up her life, such as it was to be. she would gladly have relaxed entirely and lain in bed to be waited on and tended by nora, had this been possible. but she had wearied of the physical rest, which only made her mental restlessness the greater, and she had an impulse to reach out her empty hands so that somehow, somewhence they might be filled.
the neighbors had called on her promptly, but she could not see them. they reminded her too much of the mother she had lost. mr. spotswood had also called, but he was a reminder of the other loss, now the more poignant of the two. when she excused herself to him also he wrote her a note—the conventional thing, and that merely. it seemed strangely lacking in the solicitude and affection which she had a right to [pg 187]expect from her old friend and rector. bettina was struck with this, and instantly there flashed over her a reason for it. it was only natural that he should feel a certain resentment of her jilting of one of his cousins, even though she had done it in favor of another and more important one. she remembered that the rector had been extremely fond of horace, and at this thought she had a sudden desire to see him. so she wrote him a note and asked him to come.
it was so long since she had talked with any one, and she was so nervous after all her morbid imagining, that she was feeling utterly unlike the old self-reliant, active-minded girl he remembered when the rector entered the room. she also, on her part, was unprepared for the feelings aroused by the sight of him; and when he came in, his grave face and gentle manner so entirely unchanged, in contrast to all the changes she had undergone, bettina felt a sudden tendency to tears. the thought of her mother also helped to weaken her, and the thought of horace was a still harder strain on her endurance.
she saw a certain constraint in his manner first, as she had perceived it in his note. she felt unaccountably hurt by it, and when he took her hand a little coldly and inquired for her [pg 188]health, a rush of feelings overwhelmed her and she burst into tears.
in evident surprise, the visitor tried to soothe her as best he could. naturally supposing that this grief was in consequence of her recent widowhood, he pressed her hand, and said, gently:
“i trust you are not overtaxing yourself by seeing me, my child. if you had preferred not to do so i should not have misunderstood. your bereavement is so recent that—”
but bettina, trying to silence her sobs, interrupted him.
“oh, forgive me, mr. spotswood,” she said. “i had not thought i should break down like this. i have been perfectly calm. it is not what you suppose. oh, i feel so wretched, so lonely, so bewildered! i would give the world if i could speak out my heart to one human being.”
the rector looked surprised, but visibly softened.
“to whom may you speak if not to me, bettina?” he said. “surely, whatever trouble is on your heart, you may count upon my sympathy.”
bettina did not speak. with her face hid in [pg 189]her pocket-handkerchief she shook her head, as if in dissent from the idea of his sympathy.
feeling rather helpless, he changed his tactics, in an honest endeavor to get at the real cause of her trouble.
“naturally, my child,” he said, “the sight of me brings back the thought of your beloved mother. such a sorrow—”
but again she interrupted him, this time by a silent gesture of the hand. then she said:
“it is not that. i’ve got used to that ache, and although my heart would not be my heart without it, that is a silent and accepted sorrow now. oh, mr. spotswood,” she said, impetuously, uncovering her tear-stained face and looking at him with the helplessness of a child, “you are a clergyman; you teach that god is love and compassion and forgiveness; you have a kind heart! i know you have. perhaps if i could tell you all i have suffered, and how deeply i have repented, you would be sorry for me, and not blame me as much as i deserve to be blamed.”
she was looking at him tentatively, as if to see how far she could trust to the forbearance of which she felt she had now such need.
the rector’s heart was deeply touched. this [pg 190]show of humility in the high-spirited, self-willed girl that he remembered took him by surprise.
“it could never be my impulse to blame you, my dear child, and the less so when i see how bitterly you are blaming yourself for this unknown thing. if you will tell me about it, i will do all that may be in my power to help you. at all events, you may count upon my loving sympathy.”
“ah, if i only could! it would be much to me now. but you are ignorant of what you are promising. in a certain way it concerns yourself, or at least a member of your family.”
she saw a slightly hardened look come into his face, but it quickly gave way to a gentler one.
“no matter what it is, if you have suffered and repented, the best sympathy of my heart is yours.”
“you will regard it as a confidence—a sacred confidence?” said bettina. “i could only tell you with that understanding. i know that a clergyman is accustomed to keeping the secrets of his people, and i could not say a word unless i were sure that this thing would rest forever between you and me.”
wishing to soothe her in every possible way, [pg 191]the rector gave her his promise to keep sacred what she might tell him; and thus reassured, poor bettina opened her heart. the relief of it was so exquisite and the experience was so rare, that she told it all with the abandonment of a child at its mother’s knee, and with a degree of self-accusation that might well have disarmed condemnation, as indeed it did.
up to the time of her meeting with horace in england, she kept back nothing, describing with absolute truth her feelings as well as her conduct. when she had reached that point, however, a sense of instinctive reserve came to her, and a few brief sentences described what had happened since.
at the end of her recital she paused, looking eagerly into the rector’s face, as if she both hoped and feared what he might say.
“truly, my child, it is a wretched story,” he began, as if a little careful in the choosing of his words, “but the knowledge of it has deepened instead of lessened my sympathy for you. your fault has been very great, but so is your sense of compunction; and as far as suffering can expiate, surely you have done much to atone. my own knowledge of the character of the late lord hurdly was such that i cannot pretend to be [pg 192]greatly surprised at what you have told me concerning him. i regret to say it, but justice must be done to the living as well as to the dead. the present lord hurdly will prove, i trust and believe, an honor to the name. my intercourse with him has been comparatively limited, but no young man has ever inspired me with a stronger sense of confidence. so much do i feel this that i will confess to a strong desire that he should know upon what ground you acted toward him as you did. i have given my word to you, however, and perhaps it is as well. that poor man so lately gone to his account has stains enough upon his memory without this added one. and when i think of horace—what he has suffered through the treachery of his kinsman—i feel that it is perhaps kindest to him also to leave this dark secret in the oblivion which buries it in our two hearts.”
bettina seemed not to hear his last words.
“he has suffered? you think he has suffered, and through me?”
“is it possible that you can doubt it?”
“he gave no sign,” began bettina, hesitatingly.
“to you—certainly not. how could he?”
“did he to you?” she said, breathlessly.
[pg 193]
the rector looked at her with a sort of sad scrutiny, and was silent a moment. then he said:
“he wrote me one letter—the most brokenhearted expression of suffering i have ever read. it was before your marriage, when he still had some slight hope that you had mistaken your own feelings, in the statement of them which you had made in your letter to him. but then came the announcement of your marriage, since which time your name has not been mentioned between us.”
“did you keep that letter?” she said.
“i did.”
“will you let me see it?”
“i am afraid i cannot properly do that.”
“i beg that you will, mr. spotswood. you would be doing me a very great favor, and for your cousin’s sake also i think i may venture to ask it. i was told that he was ‘fickle and capricious, incapable of a sustained affection,’ and much more in the same line. i should be truly glad to know that this was false.”
“i can give you my word for that.”
“but you can give me also his word, if you will,” she said, beseechingly. “oh, my dear, dear friend, i too have suffered, and i believe [pg 194]that what i have endured is the worst of pain, for it comes from the knowledge of wrong to another. you cannot take away that pain, but perhaps you can restore to me a lost ideal. i had come to think that there was no such thing as love—real love—in the world; to believe not only that the man who had professed it for me was false in that profession, but that it really did not exist. let me see that letter. it is an impersonal thing to me now, but i feel that it would strengthen me for all my future life. i am going to try to be good; indeed i am,” she said, her lips trembling like a child’s. “if i feel that that letter would help me, why may i not see it?”
the rector hesitated visibly; then he said:
“you shall see it, bettina. i cannot feel that it will do any harm, and it will be an act of justice, perhaps, to him as well as to you. whoever represented him to be lacking in depth of feeling has done him a wrong indeed. i had no need to have this proved to me, but if there be such a need in any breast, the reading of this letter must do away with it.”
in a few moments he rose to take leave, having promised to send the letter to her.
“will you send it at once?” she asked. “may nora go with you and bring it back?”
[pg 195]
in the stress of her feeling she forgot the impression that her eagerness might make; but it had not been lost upon the rector, who pondered all these things in his heart as he went homeward.
when he had given the letter to nora, and she had taken it to her mistress, he wondered if he had done well. bettina had not pretended that she had really loved the man to whom she had first engaged herself. the preoccupied interest and affection which she had given him then were not misrepresented in her confession to the rector, and she had been absolutely silent as to her subsequent and present feeling toward him. all that she said, the whole burden of her song, was that she had so wronged him in that past time; never once had she hinted at the possibility of any renewal of relations between them.
in spite of all this, the rector knew bettina well, and he recognized the fact that she was under the dominion of some larger and deeper feeling than he had ever known her to have except her affection for her mother. and had even that, he asked himself, so permeated her whole being—mind, soul, and character—as this feeling in which he now saw her so absorbed? he answered that it had not. it was, therefore, taking a certain responsibility [pg 196]upon himself to show this letter. but he was acting in the interest of truth and justice, and he could not find it in his heart to regret what he had done.
temperate, judicious, deliberate as the rector was in all his mental processes, he could not imagine that any result could come from the course which he had taken, except some very remote one. bettina had shown plainly her determination never to divulge to horace the contents of mr. cortlin’s letter; he was under promise to keep the secret also, so there was no ground upon which the intercourse between them could be renewed. besides this, bettina was but recently become a widow. the proprieties of the situation demanded absolute seclusion for a year at least, and, in mr. spotswood’s consciousness, propriety was supreme. he never took count of the fact that conventions could be disregarded by any right-minded person, and to this extent at least he conceived bettina to be right-minded.
