Chapter XIX: Why Don’t He Come?

Ah! how different were the thoughts of Clara Anderson from this! All that night, after a sweet confession of love had escaped her lips, as burning carnation-flowers give their honey to the bees, she lay awake with her hands folded over her bosom, smiling to herself as she watched the moonlight creeping toward her head, like the gossamer of a wedding veil.

“He loves me—he loves me!” broke in soft murmurs from her lips, until the silence of the night was laden with the sweet sound, as the atmosphere is, sometimes, made heavy with the breath of flowers.

When the day broke, she arose from her bed, blessing the sunshine because it fell upon him also—blessing the wind which came sighing through the casement, because it came from the direction of his home. She took from the high chest of drawers in her room a garment of white muslin, soft and diaphanous as a cloud, longing to look more lovely in his sight; but a thrill of delicate pride rebuked the wish and she put it back, contenting herself with one he had already admired. But something new she would have, so she changed the blue ribbon for her hair into one that seemed woven from the leaves of tea-roses.

“I will have something fresh as the morning,” she thought, while threading the simple ornament through the waves of her hair. “Oh, how can I make myself more beautiful for him?”

Clara went down-stairs bright as the morning. Over and over again she thanked Lydia for services unheeded at other times. She called to Ben from the window, and gave him her last coin, from a pure impulse of happiness.

When her grandmother’s staff gave its first sound on the floor, she darted forward and helped the old woman tenderly to a seat at the breakfast-table, and chatted with her pleasantly, while her hands fluttered over the cup she had filled, dropping in lumps of white sugar, and adding a liberal allowance of cream, that made the old lady cry out against the extravagance.

There was little work done that morning; Clara’s hands flew like lightning when she thought of her task; but half the time they were folded in her lap while she looked dreamily out of the window, living over the scene of yesterday in her mind.

When the sun reached a certain flowering almond that had become a dial to her, she began to listen, at first with a smile on her face, then with a faint cloud overshadowing it, and, after an hour, with doubting anxiety.

He did not come.

That night she lay awake also, but those hands were no longer folded on her bosom, and if her eyes sought the moonlight it was through a mist of tears. The stillness of that vigil was broken by heavy sighs, and sometimes a weary sentence:

“What can be the matter? Oh, what can have kept him? Why, of all days in the year, should he fail to come now?”

Many a time during the coming week Clara asked this weary question, but no answer was given her.

One day as she sat drearily working by the window, which had a sort of painful fascination for her, the sound of coming hoofs made the heart in her bosom leap and recoil like a shot bird.

It was his horse; she knew the tread. He was coming at last, riding eagerly. Ah, how unjust she had been to him!

The horse came nearer and nearer; it stopped at the gate.

Clara did not look out. He should not be given to know how anxious she had been. Nay, she would take up her work and seem to be very busy. The gate opened, a step on the walk. That step smote the breath from her lips. Did Waldon ever move so heavily?

A man came up to the open window and looked through; a strange, rough man, who held a bunch of flowers in his hand—hot-house flowers, such as were seldom seen in that village even by the richest.

“Be you Miss Anderson?” questioned the man, resting his flowers on the window-sill.

A faint sickness had fallen upon Clara at the sight of this man. But she saw, as through a mist, that a note was attached to the flowers and her heart leaped toward it.

“Yes, yes,” she said, reaching out her hand.

“Well, marm, I was told to give you this; so here it is.”

Clara laid the flowers in her lap and tore open the note. A poem was written on the thick, cream-white paper. The unequal lines danced before her eyes. Her very brain was dizzy. The girl conquered herself at last, and holding the paper between both shaking hands read it through.

Then she laid it down, as if the weight bore too heavily on her hands, and looked down upon it in breathless wonder, as if sorely the thing could not belong to her.

With a start, as if just coming out of a dream, she drew herself up and looked out of the window. Perhaps the man was regarding her curiously all this time.

No, he had mounted his horse and was riding away, unconscious of the misery that he left behind.

Clara was now awake to the meaning of that subtle poison in which Waldon concealed his perfidy, as serpents are hid under vine leaves. As if his own will were fate, he bewailed their separation as inevitable, and dwelt in glowing words on the happiness that for him was dead.

The girl understood it all; felt it all, striking through her pride with the keen edge of steel. But her spirit rose; the enormity of this softly-worded dismissal brought fires of unutterable scorn into her eyes.

For a moment she hated the man.

Then a flood of memories swept over her, she snatched up the flowers from her lap, bent her face down upon them, and burst into a wild passion of tears.

Lydia had heard the horseman come and go; then a sound of sobs reached her and she came into the room.

“Oh, Miss Clara, don’t, don’t; he will come back again. Don’t, now!”

Clara lifted her face; a new pang went through her; this strange girl understood her humiliation; her keen eyes saw everything, but they were full of tears now.

“Lydia, Lydia, promise me that you will never mention this. Never tell any one that you have seen Mr.—Mr. Waldon here.”

“I never, never will. Oh, Miss Clara, I’ll just die first.”

“Most of all to Bertha and Miss Noel.”

“I wouldn’t tell them, not if it was to save their lives; no, I wouldn’t.”

“I can trust you, Lydia,” said the poor girl, and a weird smile stirred her lips, “though it seems now as if you were the only human being on earth that is not ready to turn upon me.”

“No,” said Lydia, loyal to her friends even in that tumultuous moment, “there’s Ben, and Nancy, and their mother, they’d just die for you. Then there’s our folks at the Mill Bridge. Oh, you’ve got lots on lots of friends.”

“You’ll be leaving me soon, Lydia.”

Clara laid her hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked earnestly into her eyes.

“I know that, Miss Clara, but I’ve promised.”

“And I take the promise, knowing how well it will be kept.”

Lydia wiped her eyes and choked back a sob.

“I must go when they send for me, or Mrs. Canfield won’t have any one but Miss Bertha that’s used to her ways. But Ben and his mother will be on hand, never fear.”