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.