Chapter XIV: The Sudden Enlightenment

In those days Clara Anderson found her sweetest companionship with nature. Too delicate and sensitive for the confidences that most girls love, she carried her happiness into the scenes that a first absorbing passion rendered beautiful beyond all the glories of nature.

Sometimes, when the blessed rest of a Sabbath was given her, she would take long and delightfully lone walks on the hills that sloped down almost to a level with her dwelling. One day she had followed one of these pretty streams which find their source in some crystal spring in the hills and, gathering up every silver thread in their way, rush in a bright torrent through some fissure in the rocks, and pour themselves through pasture lands and meadows till they leap into some noble river and are swept off to the ocean. In a nook of the broken hill-side, shaded with elms and great weeping willows, a mountain stream of this kind had worn a deep basin where it slept in mirror-like calmness, while the foliage above sent green shadows trembling over it, and the sunshine flickered through, touching it here and there with gold.

Clara was somewhat subdued by her long walk, and resting against the trunk of a willow, stood looking dreamily down upon the water, longing to disturb its cool waves with something of the sweet unrest that had come upon her.

“Clara!”

The girl started, turned suddenly, and stood face to face with Edward Lane.

For an instant neither spoke, but remained gazing at each other, overpowered by a whirl of memories and emotions which held them speechless.

At length he stepped forward and took her hand, which lay cold in his clasp.

“I saw you in the distance and followed,” he said.

She did not answer; and his repressed passion broke forth vehemently.

“O Clara, how I have suffered! God forgive you, girl—how could you write me that letter?”

Clara was troubled, a rush of emotions swelled her heart, but instantly she recalled that conversation with his father, and the chill of unyielding pride settled upon her.

“Because it was my duty,” she replied, in a voice so hard and cold that it made him start.

“Your duty!” he repeated angrily. “The common word for all sorts of cruelty and hard-heartedness.”

Clara shut her lips close together; Edward’s voice was like his father’s, and the recollection of all the insulting words that stern man had spoken shot across her heart like flame.

“Why do you stand there like a statue?” he exclaimed, passionately. “Have you no feeling?”

“I hope not,” she answered, with vehemence equal to his own, and startling, from its contrast with her former coldness; “the less feeling a woman has the better, when she finds herself an object of such bitter contention.”

“And possessed of the power to torment others,” returned Lane.

“Did you come here only to repeat your father’s insults?” she asked.

“O Clara, be generous! I came because I was almost crazy with suffering,” he replied; “because I could not endure this desolating anguish longer. I must know what you meant by that letter—what I am to depend upon. O Clara, Clara, for mercy’s sake, change that face!”

“All that I have to say was expressed in that letter.”

“And you really felt and intended what you said!”

Clara’s forehead contracted, something in her throat seemed choking her, but she answered courageously—

“I did.”

He looked at her with a sorrowful astonishment, which wounded her worse than reproaches would have done.

“I could not believe it,” he said; “even that harsh letter failed to convince me. But you repeat it. Clara, you cannot mean this, you will not give me up; speak to me, say that you were not in earnest.”

“I was in earnest then,” she answered slowly; “I am in earnest now. I meant every word.”

The young man staggered, as if reeling under a sudden blow, but a burst of indignant feelings enabled him to recover himself.

“That is enough,” he said; “I know now how far a woman’s truth is to be depended upon! I will make no reproaches.”

“You are generous,” she exclaimed. “After your conduct during the past months, the insults of your family—”

“I am not answerable for them, Clara.”

“No; but those who offered them are your nearest kin—that, of itself, would separate us had I loved you better than my own soul—but your own conduct—”

“Forgive it, forgive it!” cried Lane, impetuously. “I was mad—as for my people, why need we care; I would leave them all to-morrow for your sake—family, home, everything.”

“We will not go back to these things,” she replied. “All this is useless; we part now and for all time.”

“Then the consequences rest with you. Whatever comes, you, and my family alone, will be to blame.”

Clara did not speak. The anguish in the young man’s face terrified her. Edward Lane looked on her with dumb entreaty a moment, then turned and hurried along the banks of the stream, reckless and despairing.

Clara watched him with deep commiseration in her heart. A pang of sympathy seized upon her, and she followed his swift descent down the hill with a feeling of keen self-reproach. She too loved.

That moment was one of thrilling enlightenment which broke upon her like a sunburst, fearful in its suddenness. The dream of past weeks was broken up, and she stood there amazed at her own transfiguration. The knowledge of this love filled her heart with infinite compassion for the man she had just driven from her with such harsh pride, and with this feeling came a pang of prophetic fear.

What if her love too should fail of a return, could she endure that and live?

Why had she driven that young man forth without one kind word to soften the keenness of his disappointment? It was heartless, bitterly, bitterly cruel. Need she blame him because his father was purse-proud and his sisters arrogant? Was love a sin, that she should trample it down so haughtily?

How dared she ask that question while her own heart was beating with such thrills of joy, such tremors of apprehension? Sin! no; such love was the very essence of worship, holy as an angel’s prayer, sweet as honeydew in lily cups.

The girl sprang forward and followed her rejected lover down the hill, calling out,

“Edward, Edward Lane,” with piteous entreaty. He heard her voice, but refused to come back. She had wounded him too deeply.

Then she threw herself on a bed of buckhorn moss that crackled and broke under her as if she were bringing ruin to that also, and covering her face with both hands wept in sorrowful penitence.

“Oh, if it should come back to me, if it should recoil on my own heart! What could I do! what could I do!” she cried out in the depths of her self-abasement.

After a while the girl arose and walked toward home, self-tortured by the cruelty of ignorance under which she had been acting a cruelty which haunted her soul like a crime. But through all this shone a great and glowing joy. The woman’s heart had discovered its capacity for loving.