Chapter 44. Bertha Changes Her Tone

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_ CHAPTER XLIV. BERTHA CHANGES HER TONE

Edith pinned on her hat as she spoke, and a moment later left the flat. Florence looked around her. She sank into an easy-chair, and opened the letter. It was, as she already knew, from Bertha. She began to read it languidly, but soon its contents caused her to start; her eyes grew bright with a strange mixture of fear, relief, and apprehension. Bertha had written as follows:--

"MY DEAR FLORENCE--

"You will doubtless, long ere this, have been told of the fearful blow which the late Mrs. Aylmer of Aylmer's Court has inflicted on us all. Kind as we have been to her, and faithfully as we have served her--I allude especially here to myself--we have been cut off without a farthing whereas two monstrous establishments have been left the benefit of her wealth. The clergyman, Mr. Edwards, is responsible for this act of what I call sacrilege. She made him write a will for her just after poor Mr. Wiltshire had departed. It is, I believe, quite in proper form, and there is not a loophole of escape. Mr. Edwards knew what he was about. Mrs. Aylmer gave her money, as she thought, back to God: a very queer way of doing charity--to leave those nearest to her to starve.

"However, my dear Florence, to come to the point, I, who have spent the last five years of my life absolutely devoted to this woman, serving her hand and foot, day and night, at all times and all seasons, have not even had a ten-pound note left to me for my pains. It is true that I shall receive my salary, which happens to be a very good one, up to the end of the present quarter. After that, as far as I am concerned, I might as well never have known Aylmer's Court nor its mistress. Fortunately I was able to feather my nest to a very small extent while with her, and have a few hundred pounds with which to face the world.

"Now, Florence, I hope you are somewhat prepared for what is about to follow. It is this: I shall be obliged in the future to use my talent for my own aggrandisement. I find that it is a very marketable commodity. A few months' use of it has placed you in great comfort; it has also brought you fame, and, further, a very excellent husband. What the said future husband will say when the denouement is revealed to him--as of course revealed it will be--is more than I can say. But you must face the fact that I can no longer supply you with stories or essays. I myself will write my own stories, and send them myself to the different papers, and the golden sovereigns, my dear, will roll into my pocket, and not into yours. You will naturally say: 'How will you do this, and face the shame of your actions in the past?' But the fact is, I am not at all ashamed, nor do I mind confessing exactly what I have done. My talent is my own, and it is my opinion that the world will crowd after me all the more because I have done this daring thing, and you, my poor little understudy for the time being, will be my understudy no longer. I take the part of leading lady once for all myself. I am coming up to London to-morrow, and will call to see you, as, on consideration, I think that fourth story which you are preparing for the Argonaut might as well appear with my name to it.

"Yours very sincerely,

"BERTHA KEYS."

Florence perused this letter two or three times; then she put it in her pocket and entered her bed-room. She did not quite know what she was doing. She felt a little giddy, but there was a queer, unaccountable sense of relief all over her. On her desk lay her own neat copy of the story which she was preparing for the Argonaut. By the side of the desk also was quite a pile of letters from different publishers offering her work and good pay. These letters Tom Franks insisted on her either taking no notice of or merely writing to decline the advantageous offers. She took them up now.

"Messrs. So-and-so would be glad to see Miss Aylmer. They could offer her...." And then came terms which would have made the mouths of most girls water. Or Florence received a letter asking her if she would undertake to write three or four stories for such a paper, the terms to be what she herself liked to ask. She looked at them all wistfully. It is true she had not yet lighted a fire in her room, but she put a match to it now, in order to burn the publishers' letters. The story she was copying was about half-done. She had meant to finish it from Bertha's manuscript before she went out. She smiled to herself as she looked.

"I need never finish it now," she thought.

Just as this thought came to her she heard a tap at her door. It was a messenger with a note. She told him to wait, and opened it. It was from Franks.

"I quite forgot when I saw you an hour ago to ask you to let me have manuscript of the next story without fail this evening. Can you send it now by messenger, or shall he call again for it within a couple of hours? This is urgent.

"THOMAS FRANKS."

Florence sat down and wrote a brief reply.

"I am very sorry, but you cannot have manuscript to-night.

"FLORENCE AYLMER."

The messenger departed with this note, and Florence dressed herself to go out, and she went quickly downstairs. She walked until she saw the special omnibus which she was looking for. She was taken straight to Hampstead, and she walked up the steep hill until she found the little cottage which she had visited months ago in the late summer-time. Florence went to the door, and a neat servant with an apple-blossom face opened it.

"Is Mrs. Trevor in?" asked Florence.

"Yes, miss; what name shall I say?"

Florence gave her name: "Miss Florence Aylmer."

She was immediately ushered into the snug drawing-room, bright with firelight. She shut her eyes, and a feeling of pain went through her heart.

"The way of transgressors is very, very hard," she thought. "Shall I ever keep straight? What a miserable character I must be!"

Just then Mrs. Trevor entered the room. She had not been pleased with Florence; she had not been pleased with her manner to her son. Mothers guess things quickly, and she had guessed Maurice's secret many months ago.

Florence held out her hand wistfully, and looked full at the little widow.

"I have come to speak to you," she said. "I want to know if you will"--her lips trembled--"advise me."

"Sit down, my dear," said Mrs. Trevor. She motioned Florence to a seat, but the girl did not take it.

"I have come to you, as the only one in all the world who can help me," continued Florence. "I have something very terrible to say, and I thought perhaps you would listen, and perhaps you would advise. May I speak to you just because I am a very lonely girl and you are a woman?"

"If you put it in that way, of course you may speak," said Mrs. Trevor. "To tell you the truth, I have been displeased with you; I have thought that you have not been fair."

"To whom?" asked Florence.

"To my son Maurice."

Florence coloured; then she put her hand to her heart.

"You never replied to my letter, Mrs. Trevor."

"What was there to say?"

"Will you tell me now what you thought of it?"

Mrs. Trevor had seated herself by the fire. She held out her small hands to the grateful blaze; then she looked round at the girl.

"Sit down, child," she said; "take off your hat. If you wish to know what I really thought, I imagined that you were a little hysterical and that you had overstated things. Girls of your age are apt to do so. I was very sorry, for Maurice's sake, that you did not accept my offer; but otherwise I prefer to be alone."

"I see. Well, I must tell you now that I did not exaggerate. I have been bad through and through: quite unworthy of your attention and care: quite unworthy of Mr. Maurice's regard."

"That is extremely likely," said the mother of Mr. Maurice, drawing herself up in a stately fashion.

"Oh, don't be unkind to me; do bear with me while I tell you. Afterwards I shall go away somewhere, but I must relieve my soul. Oh, it is so sinful!"

"Speak, child, speak. Who am I that I should turn away from you?"

"Years ago," began Florence, speaking in a dreary tone, "I was at a school called Cherry Court School. While there I was assailed by a very great temptation. The patron of the school, Sir John Wallis, offered a prize on certain conditions to the girls. The prize meant a great deal, and covered a wide curriculum.

"It was a great opportunity, and I struggled hard to win; but Sir John Wallis, although he offered the prize to the school, in reality wanted a girl called Kitty Sharston, who was the daughter of his old friend, to get it.

"Kitty Sharston was supposed to be most likely to win the prize, and she did win it in the end; but let me tell you how. In the school was a girl as pupil teacher, whose name was Bertha Keys."

"What!" cried Mrs. Trevor: "the girl who has been companion to Mrs. Aylmer: whom my son has so often mentioned?"

"The very same girl. Oh, I don't want to abuse her too much, and yet I cannot tell my terrible story without mentioning her. She tempted me; she was very clever, and she tempted me mightily. She wrote the essay for me, the prize essay which was hers, not mine. Oh, I know you are shocked, I feel your hand trembling; but let me hold it; don't draw it away. She wrote the essay, and it was read aloud before all the guests and all the other girls as mine, and I won the Scholarship; yes, I won it through the essay written by Bertha Keys."

"That was very terrible, my dear. How could you bear it? How could you?"

"I went to London. You remember how I came to see you. I had very little money, just twenty pounds, and mother, who had only fifty pounds a year, could not help me, and I was so wretched that I did not know what to do. I went from one place to another offering myself as teacher, although I hated teaching and I could not teach well; but no one wanted me, and I was in despair, and I used to get so desperately hungry too. Oh, you cannot tell what it is to want a meal--just to have a good dinner, say, once a week, and bread-and-butter all the rest of the days. Oh, you do feel so empty when you live on bread-and-butter and nothing else! Then I had a letter from Bertha, and she made me a proposal. She sent with the letter a manuscript. Ah! I feel you start now."

"This is terrible!" said Mrs. Trevor. She stood up in her excitement; she backed a little way from Florence.

"You guess all, but I must go on telling you," continued the poor girl. "She sent this manuscript, and she asked me to use it as my own. She said she did not want any of the money, and she spoke specious words, and I was tempted. But I struggled, I did struggle. It was Miss Franks who really was the innocent cause of pushing me over the gulf, for she read the manuscript and said it was very clever, and she showed it to her brother, the man I am now engaged to, and he said it was clever, and it was accepted for the Argonaut almost before I knew what I was doing; and that was the beginning of everything. I was famous. Bertha was the person who wrote the stories and the essays. I was wearing borrowed plumes, and I was not a bit clever; and, oh, Mrs. Trevor, the end has come now, for Mrs. Aylmer has died and has left all her great wealth to the hospitals, and I have had a letter from Bertha. You may read it, Mrs. Trevor: do read it. This Is what Bertha says."

As Florence spoke, she thrust Bertha's letter into Mrs. Trevor's hand.

"I will ring for a light," said the widow. She approached the bell, rang it, and the little rosy-faced servant appeared.

"Tea, Mary, at once for two, and some hot cakes, and bring a lamp, please.

"I am glad and I am sorry you have told me," she said. "I will read the letter when the lamp comes. Now warm yourself.

"You poor girl," she said. "I will not touch this letter until I see you looking better.

"I will read this in another room," she said; "you would like to be alone for a little."

She left the room softly with Bertha's letter, and Florence still sat on by the fire. She sat so for some time, and presently, soothed by the warmth, and weary from all the agony she had undergone, the tired-out girl dropped asleep. _

Read next: Chapter 45. "All The Roses Are Dead"

Read previous: Chapter 43. Mrs. Aylmer's Will

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