“Clara Delano.”
Dr. Delano found his father very ill, and his few days of absence lengthened into two weeks. He wrote occasionally to his wife, but every day brought a letter, or a book or magazine, to Ella, which she never read, being engaged in a flirtation that demanded too much dressing and general attention to leave any time for reading. Clara sometimes thought her husband must be crazy. He knew how fond she was of reading. As a school-girl, he had constantly sent her magazines and periodicals, with passages or articles marked which he wished her to notice particularly, and he had told her afterward that he had loved her even then, and thought of her as his future wife.
She often watched Ella in her display of feminine wiles, but could not discover what there was to fascinate men. The subtle mystery escaped all analysis in that case, as it ever does; but Clara, in her generosity, believed there must be something beneath the surface-some hidden wealth of sensibility, perhaps—which women could not discover. If Albert had only trusted her as a perfect friend, and had not tried in any way to deceive her when he became absorbed in his passion for Ella, she would have met him nobly and suffered far less; but her pain had been tenfold increased by his want of confidence in her sympathy. He did not and could not understand her, and this discovery of his weakness was a blow to her self-pride hardly less endurable than his submitting her to the mortifying position of the neglected wife.
One evening, when he had been gone two weeks, Clara sat in her room watching the rosy sunset haze on the old mountains, and thinking over the events of her life. She had just re-read Albert’s last letter. The words were there, but the soul was lacking. Later in the evening she recognized Ella’s voice proceeding from a balcony beneath. A gentleman was with her, and there could be no doubt that Ella was drawing him on to make the greatest possible fool of himself. Clara heard her own name mentioned by Ella in no flattering terms. Her companion opposed her criticism quite generously, considering his position with regard to Ella. Clara could not sit there without hearing everything, and there was a temptation to do so, as any one can believe who has ever been placed in a similar position. She, however, closed her window with a little noise, and when she opened it again, all was silent. What she had heard Ella say, was, that Dr. Delano’s marriage was a “veritable mésalliance”—that there could “never be any real sympathy between them.” Once Clara would have written all her thoughts freely to Albert; now a seal was on her lips. Whatever she might say of Ella would be attributed at once to her inability to comprehend Ella’s “childlike” nature. Oh, it was hard to be forced to brood in silence over thoughts and feelings that he, of all the world, should share with her.
That day Clara had received one of Susie’s long, nicely-written letters, detailing little village events, the mild flirtations of the twin sisters, the doctor’s sayings and doings, the ways and speeches of “little Min,” and her own schemes and hopes for the future. “Dear Susie!” thought Clara; “she knows I am unhappy, and so writes me every day, hoping to bring some little sunshine into my life. Why, even Susie shows more love for me than Albert. What is there in his letter? Only the cool assurance that he has not changed—the stupid persistence that the sun is shining, when all the world is wrapped in Cimmerian gloom. My father would never consider me weak enough to be deceived by such shallow pretence.”
Clara had gone to her room to answer Albert’s letter. For this purpose she had given up joining a moonlight excursion to Diana’s Baths, a wonderful freak of Nature where, in the solid granite, the trickling water-drops of ages have smoothly carved out vessels of all imaginable shapes, not a few greatly resembling the common bathing-tub. All these vessels were overflowing with the crystal water of a mountain-spring.
Clara sat until far into the night, trying to write to Albert, and knowing all the while that it would be just as well to be silent. And yet she did write a long letter—a cry from an overladen soul that ought to have moved a heart of stone. “I know not why I write,” she said, toward the last of the letter. “My reason rebels against these frantic attempts to patch together the fragments of the golden bowl. Love wants its perfect illusions—wants and will have nothing else, these failing. No wonder you try to deceive me when you see how my health and strength, and all the little beauty I ever had, are failing under the griefs I have borne so long. Believe me, dearest, I do know I am wrong to write you when I must burden you with sorrow you are powerless to alleviate. I cannot blame you in my heart. It is not your fault that Clara’s love has ceased to be the most precious thing in the world to you.”
To this there soon came the following reply:
“My Dear Clara:—I wish you would give up studying the death of love, and study its life. You brood over imaginary troubles too much. I wish you could have children, but that will never happen, because you are too unquiet in your temperament. You have no real cause for unhappiness. My regard for Ella in no way interferes with that for my wife. You ought to know that all real love ennobles. Albert never takes back any love that he once freely gives, and my love for you has never suffered the slightest change. Love is not a suffocating warmth, or at least, it should not be.
“I send you some valerian powders. Take one every night at bed-time. I am obliged to go out of town for a day or two on pressing business, and then, dearest, I shall be with you in the flesh, as I am ever in spirit.