In the house Tom expressed his old dissatisfaction with his daughter. “Why haven't you married and settled down like a decent woman?” he shouted. “Tell me that. Why haven't you married and settled down? Why are you always getting in trouble? Why haven't you married and settled down?”
Clara walked in the road beside Hugh and thought that all her troubles would come to an end if he would ask her to be his wife. Then she became ashamed of her thoughts. As they passed the last street lamp and prepared to set out by a roundabout way along a dark road, she turned to look at Hugh's long, serious face. The tradition that had made him appear different from other men in the eyes of the people of Bidwell began to affect her. Ever since she had come home she had been hearing people speak of him with something like awe in their voices. For her to marry the town's hero would, she knew, set her on a high place in the eyes of her people. It would be a triumph for her and would re-establish her, not only in her father's eyes but in the eyes of every one. Every one seemed to think she should marry; even Jim Priest had said so. He had said she was the marrying kind. Here was her chance. She wondered why she did not want to take it.
Clara had written her friend Kate Chanceller a letter in which she had declared her intention of leaving home and going to work, and had come to town afoot to mail it. On Main Street as she went through the crowds of men who had come to loaf the evening away before the stores, the force of what her father had said concerning the connection of her name with that of Buckley the swindler had struck her for the first time. The men were gathered together in groups, talking excitedly. No doubt they were discussing Buckley's arrest. Her own name was, no doubt, being bandied about. Her cheeks burned and a keen hatred of mankind had possession of her. Now her hatred of others awoke in her an almost worshipful attitude toward Hugh. By the time they had walked together for five minutes all thought of using him to her own ends had gone. “He's not like Father or Henderson Woodburn or Alfred Buckley,” she told herself. “He doesn't scheme and twist things about trying to get the best of some one else. He works, and because of his efforts things are accomplished.” The figure of the farm hand Jim Priest working in a field of corn came to her mind. “The farm hand works,” she thought, “and the corn grows. This man sticks to his task in his shop and makes a town grow.”
In her father's presence during the afternoon Clara had remained calm and apparently indifferent to his tirade. In town in the presence of the men she was sure were attacking her character, she had been angry, ready to fight. Now she wanted to put her head on Hugh's shoulder and cry.
They came to the bridge near where the road turned and led to her father's house. It was the same bridge to which she had come with the school teacher and to which John May had followed, looking for a fight. Clara stopped. She did not want any one at the house to know that Hugh had walked home with her. “Father is so set on my getting married, he would go to see him to-morrow,” she thought. She put her arms upon the rail of the bridge and bending over buried her face between them. Hugh stood behind her, turning his head from side to side and rubbing his hands on his trouser legs, beside himself with embarrassment. There was a flat, swampy field beside the road and not far from the bridge, and after a moment of silence the voices of a multitude of frogs broke the stillness. Hugh became overwhelmingly sad. The notion that he was a big man and deserved to have a woman to live with and understand him went entirely away. For the moment he wanted to be a boy and put his head on the shoulder of the woman. He did not look at Clara but at himself. In the dim light his hands, nervously fumbling about, his long, loosely-put-together body, everything connected with his person, seemed ugly and altogether unattractive. He could see the woman's small firm hands that lay on the railing of the bridge. They were, he thought, like everything connected with her person, shapely and beautiful, just as everything connected with his own person was unshapely and ugly.
Clara aroused herself from the meditative mood that had taken possession of her, and after shaking Hugh's hand and explaining that she did not want him to go further went away. When he thought she had quite gone she came back. “You'll hear I was engaged to that Alfred Buckley who has got into trouble and has been arrested,” she said. Hugh did not reply and her voice became sharp and a little challenging. “You'll hear we were going to be married. I don't know what you'll hear. It's a lie,” she said and turning, hurried away.