LOATHING HER VICTORY.
Clara let her work fall as she rose slowly from her seat. Pride like
iron kept her from betraying any physical weakness, although the room
reeled around her and she clutched the back of her chair for support.
Her whole being was in tumult. She only wanted to wound herself in the
bitterest, most fatal way possible, to overwhelm the coarse man with a
sense of her scorn.
She turned and confronted the Judge, who fairly shrank from the
whiteness of her face and the intolerable fire of her eyes.
“I have heard you through,” she said, “now hear me.”
The Judge glanced helplessly toward the door, ready to believe himself
in the presence of a maniac. Perhaps physical courage was not the
quality upon which he most strongly founded his sense of importance.
“Your son did make my acquaintance—I will not even answer the gross
insult conveyed in the accusation you bring against me. He loved me, he
told me so! What my feelings were he does not yet know nor shall you. As
your son, as the brother of your daughters, I have only pity for him
now. After he had gone away I heard the reports which you and your
family spread abroad regarding me—the insults you have offered me now
were intensified into slander then. Had I possessed a father or a
brother, you would never have dared to speak against me! Your cowardice
is safe—I am a defenceless woman! But from the depths of my soul I
loathe the slanderers, high or low, who have been base enough to malign
me.”
The Judge lifted his hand as if to ward off these thrilling words, but
he was beyond the power of speech, and Clara went on:
“When your son came back I told him of these things. He had lost nothing
of his original manliness and considered an insult to me an outrage to
himself. I told him that I could never marry him—”
“Was he mad enough for that?” broke in Mr. Lane, so bewildered that he
was unconscious of his words.
“Ah, you expected him to prove himself altogether your son. I know he
would have been more worthy in your eyes had he insulted me as you are
doing, but he is human. He begged me to marry him then; but I refused.
Judge Lane, had I loved that man better than Heaven itself, had my very
existence depended upon it, I would have refused to become his wife.
Every noble feeling of my nature revolted at the proposal. I felt and
knew that the real disgrace would have been for me, for so matching
myself.”
Those last words roused her listener into some signs of life. He rose to
his feet and stammered out—
“I have heard enough, young woman, quite enough; I shall know how to
act.”
Clara stepped between him and the door; he drew back his chair and
stared at her.
She spoke low, now her anger had half spent itself in those scathing
words.
“You have forced me to speak,” she said; “you must hear all that I have
to say.”
The Judge fluttered his hands in a deprecating way and made faint
contortions with his once handsome mouth, which, like that of many stout
men, had grown too small for his face, but beyond that he could exhibit
no signs of resistance. Her vehement eloquence had wrecked all his
ideas.
“I know all the disgrace your son has brought upon himself—he has been
suspended from college. Blame neither him nor me—but yourself—for you
alone have been the cause.”
Another sound from the Judge’s throat, as if he were being strangled
still tighter, but not a word.
“Your visit here, sir, was paid too late; you cannot even have the petty
consolation of thinking that you broke off all acquaintance between your
son and myself. It was done on my own behalf.”
Another struggle from the Judge, but no words.
“Sir, I could not marry him—but your opposition would have been a feeble
reason! I dared not trust myself to him—his faults—his vices—all prevent
it—he was not worthy of himself.”
She paused and leaned more heavily upon the chair; she had done her
worst now both by herself and the man before her.
But the fearful tumult in her soul, made up of so many contending
emotions that it would have been impossible to analyze them, had forced
her to speak. She felt a fearful joy in the contempt she had hurled at
the father, a terrible exultation in the fury which had moved her to
fling back insult for insult!
The Judge had sunk into his chair again and was staring at her still
with a blank, hopeless look. Then he made an effort and arose. The
indignity thus hurled upon him made him faint.
He reached the door and turned to look upon the beautiful young creature
whose best feelings he had come to insult. There was something imposing
in her fierce anger that fascinated him.
She neither spoke nor looked at him, so he passed out, feeling a glow of
cowardly relief when he found himself in the open air.
When the door closed, Clara’s unnatural strength gave way, she tottered,
stretched out her arms, and fell slowly forward upon her knees. She had
not fainted, her eyes were open, full of anguish and shame.
The unworthy contest in which she had triumphed had tortured every
delicate sense of womanhood in her nature, till the remembrance became
torture.