Chapter XXIX: Stricken Down

Clara Anderson left the Stone Tavern and was going blindly toward her horse when she felt the clatter of a pair of hoofs almost over her head, and, looking up, saw that a horse in full speed had been suddenly thrown back on his haunches and must have trodden her down but for the prompt energy of its rider.

She stood mute and helpless whilst the man leaped from his saddle and came towards her, pale and intensely agitated.

“Clara! Great Heavens, is it you? I have been miles and miles searching for you.”

She did not heed the strangeness of this confession, but stood gazing upon him, pale still, but with soft relenting in her eyes.

“Are you hurt? Did the hoofs of that awkward beast touch you? or is it only the shock?” he questioned, terror-stricken by her pallor.

“Nothing has hurt me,” said the girl, looking at him in a wild, questioning way. “Nothing ever can hurt me again I think. But I am glad we have met, Edward; I was cruel to you once. It seems a long time ago; you remember we were by the willows that overhang that trout pool in the hills; I was sorry and tried to call you back, but you would not come.”

“I know, I know,” said Lane. “I was hurt, angry, anything but myself, but shame and sorrow for my rudeness came afterward, or I should not have been searching for you since morning as I have been.”

“Searching for me—how?” said Clara, lifting both hands to her temples. “I—I came to meet Bertha—Bertha Canfield—she was a dear friend of mine once—and you have been waiting for me. I did not think any one would care to search for me.”

“I would go to the ends of the earth for you, Clara.”

“Would you, Edward? How strangely things get twisted! Well! well! there was something I meant to say for you.”

“Let us go out of the sight of these windows,” said Lane, glancing toward the tavern where he saw a woman’s face peering curiously through a break in one of the red vallances that blazed across the lower sashes of the bar-room. “Come this way.”

As he spoke, Lane opened a rude gate that led to a garden back of the house, and from thence to a broken hill-side covered with oak and chestnut trees.

Clara followed him without a thought, beyond the great wish of atonement that filled her aching heart. She walked by his side with quick, uneven footsteps until they stood within the shelter of the oaks and were surrounded with broken rocks, where the gushing waters of some spring could be heard above the soft shivering of the leaves.

Here the girl paused and placed one hand on her companion’s arm. Surprised by this act he looked at her earnestly. Those pale, regular features were terribly agitated. Her eyes were flushed, her lips trembled. All the haughty pride, which seemed a portion of Clara Anderson’s nature, was swept away. Her features revealed great anguish, nothing more. The young man had turned as one who expects reproaches; but when he met her look his features relaxed, and for a moment his eyes rested on her with an expression of sad tenderness.

“I have wanted to speak to you so much,” she said, “to beg your pardon over and over again for the unhappiness I have brought upon you.”

“Have you indeed relented, Clara?” cried the young man, grasping her hand.

“Indeed I have! I did not know how terrible such agony could be. How should I? how should I?”

Her voice went out in a pathetic wail, the misery in her eyes made them black as midnight.

“Oh, Clara! is this true? Has one gleam of love for me softened your heart?”

“Love! love for you, Edward! Oh, not that, but something better, holier; such tender pity; such infinite gratitude for your love; for myself such overwhelming wretchedness—that is nothing; I am speaking only of you, Edward; it is your charity, your forgiveness, I am asking for, that is all.”

“That is all!” exclaimed the young man, hoarse and wild with disappointment. “Then you have nothing but pity to give to the man who worships the very ground you tread upon, who has made himself a madman on your account, a byword to his friends.”

“No, no,” cried the girl, “you have never been that, you never will be that.”

“God only knows what I shall be if you continue this course of torture; now lifting me to Heaven with a gleam of hope, then dashing me down to earth again. You, Clara Anderson, drove me into a reckless course that has brought repudiation upon me, even from my own father.”

“I did, I did,” cried the wretched young creature, wringing her hands.

“You taunted me with the acts of those who have been cruel to me as they were to you.”

“I know it.”

“You drove me by your mad pride into the very excesses with which I had been charged, innocently till then.”

“O God, forgive me—I cannot forgive myself,” she moaned.

“I became an outcast from my father’s house, because he had been cruel to you. But for one friend I might have been an outcast from society.”

“A friend—what friend?”

“I spoke of Waldon, a noble, true man, who held forth his hand to me, and when others dropped away from my unworthy fate, gave me his confidence.”

The girl, white as death, shivering in all her frame, threw out her hands as if pleading for her life.

“Do not say more, you are killing me. Hear what I can plead for myself—no, no, I will not attempt that—the ground over which we must tread is too thorny. I was harsh, cruel, very cruel, sarcastic, insulting, but this blow I have not deserved!”

“What, Clara? I have given none.”

“No, no, I do not complain, but you have not yet fathomed the depths of misery that underlie some lives. I have been unjust, cruel, wicked; but what do you know of real humiliation! No one but a woman can feel that!”

Lane seized the two hands she had clasped in her anguish and held—nay, wrung them, till at another time she must have cried out with the pain. His voice was low and broken; tears stood in his eyes.

“Oh, Clara, my poor Clara, do not wound yourself in this dreadful manner. Have mercy on yourself and me.”

“Not mercy for myself, but humiliation. Ah, do not fear that I shall not be punished for the havoc my pride has made, for the hardness of a heart that could not love you, cannot love you.”

“Cannot love me! Then why are we here?”

“That I might win your forgiveness, and beseech you to be my friend, Edward.”

“Friend! no, a thousand times no! Clara Anderson, when I offer love you shall not fling back ashes. When I want a friend he is in yonder, ready even in the first glow of his own happiness to give me both sympathy and help.”

“You mean—you mean—”

She could not finish the question; the words died on her lips.

“I mean that Waldon does not find your friend Bertha ice-cold as you have been to me.”

His words reached that unhappy girl’s heart like a death-shot; without a word or a sign she fell to the earth.

The young man sunk to his knees beside her, white as she was, trembling, as she had ceased to do.

“God help me! God forgive me! In my rash anger I have cast her off forever and ever,” he moaned. “What did I say, that my words should smite her down like the blow of a sword? I cannot remember! I cannot remember! terrible it must have been to hurt her so! Is she dead? Is she dead?”

Urged to action by this awful doubt he ran to a spring that flowed from under a neighboring rock, gathered some water in his hands and dashed it over her face. She did not move or give a sign of life. Wild with terror he ran toward the house.

But the water had its slow effect. He had scarcely reached the tavern when Clara moved and opened her eyes—a moment she lay upon the grass weak and confused. Then stung to life by a recollection of what had been revealed to her on that spot, she struggled to her feet and pressing both hands to her temples moved away with a step so painfully unsteady, that but for the undergrowth to which she caught from time to time the poor girl must have fallen. She had scarcely passed out of sight when young Lane came hurriedly up the hill carrying a tumblerful of wine, which in his unsteady haste dashed over his hands. When he saw the place empty where he had left Clara the glass dropped from his hold, and sitting down upon a fragment of rock, he covered his face and wept bitterly.