Chapter XXV: Humble Friends

It was true; Clara Anderson had changed greatly, both in person and mind, since Waldon had so unaccountably ceased to visit the old house. Soul and body she was in constant antagonism with her fate. Up to this time she had scarcely known how deep and all-absorbing her love for this man had become. To her ardent nature this first passion of a life had swept everything before it and was now the one idea of her lonely existence.

This entire concentration upon one being would hardly have been possible to a young girl surrounded by friends and the pleasures fitting her age. To Clara it had grown something far beyond the romance or dream of a young heart. That one solitary love had twined itself about the very springs of her being, and the attempt to uproot it was destroying her.

She did not know this; in the tumult of passion and pride she had no time to think of consequences. She only longed to cause herself the severest possible pain, to blot out every gleam of sunshine, tear up every sweet blossom of hope, and fling herself down in the darkness. Like a wounded animal, that madly plunges among brambles, and down broken rocks, she turned into the thorniest path, and, wounding herself with bitter thoughts, kept constantly at work, allowing herself neither rest from toil nor pain. Her old grandmother pleaded with her fruitlessly to seek relaxation, for there was something startling, even to her impaired perception, in the haggard look of that young face.

One day, at breakfast, the old woman put on her spectacles, and, leaning forward, scrutinized the girl’s face with sharp anxiety.

What she saw there set her old head into tremulous motion.

“It’s all true,” she soliloquized, forgetting that others could hear her words; “the girl is just working herself to death. Clara! I say, Clara Anderson! you are just working yourself to death, and I won’t have it so. Cut off my tea and white sugar; cut off everything but a crust of bread and a drink of milk. I always liked them, but you never will let me have what is best for me. Just as if cosseting up an old woman would do her any good. I tell you this sewing, night and day, has got to stop.”

Clara was so nervously irritable in those days that she answered the old woman’s real kindness with curt impatience.

“I have got the work to finish, grandmother; and it must be done.”

The old woman knew how positive her granddaughter could be and strove to subdue her own fretful spirit into persuasiveness.

“You’ll make yourself sick; then what will become of us, I should like to know?”

“Our kind and good-hearted neighbors—we will depend on them,” replied Clara, bitterly.

“I’m thinking if we waited for them we might both die here without help,” was the sharp reply.

“Possibly, grandmother, but I do not intend to be sick.”

“You will, though; you are as white as a sheet now.”

“That proves nothing.”

“What troubles you, Clara? Do tell me? Is it anything but the work?”

“Nothing at all. Why will you torment me with such questions?”

“That’s the way you always put me off; you don’t tell me anything more than as if I were a stranger.”

“I have nothing to tell. What can happen in a place like this?”

“I don’t know; but you’re not like yourself; I am sure there is something the matter.”

“Please don’t imagine such things, grandmother; you will only make me fancy myself ill or miserable when I am not.”

“I wish it was all fancy; but you won’t make me believe it,” muttered the old lady.

“I am perfectly well; why will you think otherwise?” persisted the girl.

Mrs. Anderson ceased her expostulations, they were perfectly useless and only gave pain to both. The old woman saw that and was too much disturbed for a useless contest.

Lydia, who was listening, now joined in the conversation.

“The work isn’t all that’s breaking her down, grandma,” she said, so well pleased with the old lady that she gave her this honorary title. “She doesn’t eat worth a cent, and only pretends to when you’re looking on. New-laid eggs are nothing to her. I don’t believe she’d hanker after briled chicken now if it was right before her; which it isn’t, the chickens being tough old hens every one of ’em.”

“That’s so!”

This pithy indorsement came through the back door, where Ben stood with a basket in his hand.

“Lydia and I investergated the hen-coop; nothing worth while there; but here is a critter that’ll make Miss Clara’s mouth water. I’ve been on the watch for it more ’en a week, and nabbed him at last. Look-a-here!”

Ben came eagerly forward, set his basket on a corner of the table, and raising a layer of fresh chestnut leaves, revealed a fine brook trout, with drops of crystal water on his fins, and delicate amber and ruby spots on his skies.

“Ain’t that a beauty, now?” cried Ben, looking proudly from face to face for the admiration he had so well deserved. “I’ve been a watching him in that deep hole under the willers; you know the place, Miss, for I’ve seen you up there Sundays all summer. He was good at hiding himself amongst the brake leaves and scraggly roots; I’ve counted his spots many a time, but he kept awful shy of the hook. This morning I baited with a lively bluebottle that kept his wings a going. That brought him. Golly!—I beg your pardon, Miss, but sometimes I can’t help swearing—but didn’t my heart jump when he dropped all of a quiver on the bank! ‘There’s a good breakfast for the Miss,’ says I; ‘if that doesn’t give her an appetite nothing will.’ Just you look at it, Miss; fins like a butterfly’s wing, spots that might be sot in a lady’s ring, and _such_ meat!”

Clara was touched by the honest fellow’s kindness, and his heart swelled as she looked down into the basket with a smile on her lips.

The old grandmother put on her glasses again and peered down upon the prize with great satisfaction.

Lydia took a glance from under Ben’s arm.

“Oh, isn’t it a lovely shiner?” she exclaimed. “I say, Ben, ask your mother to come over and cook it; that sort of fancy work is too much for me.”

“She’ll come if the Miss will only try to get up a splendid appetite. Say now, will you?”

Clara smiled, and this time tears came into her eyes.

“I will promise anything, if that can repay all your kindness, Ben.”

Ben answered this with a broad grin of delight.

“Then there’s another thing, Miss, that Lydia and I and Nancy have been thinking of. The horse is splendid now, getting sort of rampagnacious for work; if you’d just ride him now and then?”

“Oh, Ben! we mustn’t think of that; I have no wish—no time,” said Clara, who felt as if every one must know of her cruel humiliation, and shrunk nervously from the observation of her neighbors.

“Then again,” said Ben, “there is the dug-out a swinging under the willers, like a cradle that wants to be rocked. You might go down to the river once in a while, and let me row you about.”

“Oh, do now! It’s the loveliest sort of fun,” Lydia broke in, “and nobody to see but us.”

The old grandmother had arisen and stood leaning with both hands on her cane, looking anxiously from one face to another as these suggestions were made.

“They’re good-hearted children, both of ’em,” she said. “You ought to go, Clara; it will do you good.”

“It will please the only friends I have in the world,” said Clara, with deep feeling, “and that is enough for me. Yes, Ben, we will have the trout for dinner, and try the canoe after.”

“That’s the time o’ day.”

Ben’s voice was joyous as a shout when he said this. Giving Lydia a sign to follow him to the back stoop he held a short conference with her there.