by Grey, Zane
Clara's response was electrifying. Her face seemed to blaze with rapture and the swift kiss she gave Edd admitted of no doubt as to her acceptance of Edd's blunt speech. But she made no move to approach Lucy.
Joe Denmeade sat on the edge of the bed, white and spent. Sight of him caused Lucy's heart to leap to her throat.
"Howdy, Lucy!" he said, with a smile that was beautiful, "Is my brother Edd talkin' straight?"
"Yes, Joe. I'm going to be doubly your sister," she replied.
"I couldn't ask no more," he rejoined, with deep feeling.
There followed a moment of constraint. Lucy could not grasp the situation, but she felt its tensity. Then, trembling, she turned to face Clara.
"I have told Joe," said Clara as Lucy met her eyes.
Lucy received this blow fully, without preparation, and following hard on stress of feeling that had left her spent. Her intelligence was swift to accept the wondrous and almost incredible fact of Clara's regeneration, but her emotions seemed dead or locked in her breast. Mutely she stared at this beloved sister. She saw an incalculable change, if she saw clearly at all. She might have been dazed. In that endless moment there was a slow action of her own mind, but something she expressed wrought havoc in Clara. The glow, the rapture, the exaltation that so enhanced Clara's beauty, suddenly faded and died. Even her moment of supreme victory had been full of thought of self. But Lucy's agony transformed it.
"I--told him," burst out Clara, sobbing. "I couldn't stand it--any longer. I wanted him to know...I could have gone on--living a lie--if you had not taken my--my shame. But that was too much. It killed something in me...So I told him I couldn't let you do it. I must do it myself. And I gave Joe up...But, Lucy, he forgave me!...He will stand by me!"
"Oh, Joe--how splendid--of you!" gasped Lucy, and with the hard utterance her bound faculties seemed to loosen. She ran to Joe's side. "But how can you meet this--this terrible situation?"
Joe took her trembling hands in his.
"Why, Lucy, don't be upset!" he said. "It's not so bad. If Clara had told me long ago I reckon you'd both been saved a lot of heart-breakin'...There's only one way. The preacher who married Clara an' me will keep our secret. An' he'll marry us again. We'll just leave out tellin' anybody that this--this cowboy forgot to marry Clara himself."
"Yes--yes!" cried Lucy wildly.
"Reckon thet's aboot all," continued Joe, with his rare smile. "Clara an' I will tell the folks, an' leave at once...An' we'll come back with the baby!"
Here Edd Denmeade strode to a position before them, and though he seemed to be about to address Joe, he certainly looked at Lucy.
"Reckon you'd do well to have the parson meet you in Cedar Ridge an' marry you there," he said.
Lucy could have laughed had she not been fighting tears. "Edd, are you talking to Joe--or me?"
"Lucy, would you marry me at the same time?" he queried hoarsely.
"I--I fear the crowd at Cedar Ridge. They'll storm us," faltered Clara.
"Shore we can fool them," returned Edd.
"All right. We've settled it all," said Joe, in a grave kind of happiness. "I'll go in an' tell the folks."
"Wal, I'm goin' with you," rejoined Edd as Joe rose. They strode out together, and Edd's brawny arm went round his brother's shoulder. "Joe, I reckon it's as good one way as another. It's all in the family. The three of them'll be Denmeades."
Lucy closed the tent door after them and turned to her sister. Clara's eyes were shining through tears.
"Aren't they good?" she murmured. "'It's all in the family,' Edd said. Either he or Joe would have been happy to be father to my baby...Oh, I did not appreciate them. I did not understand Joe--or you--or myself...I did not know what love was...Now I can atone for the past."
At sunset Lucy escaped the hilarious Denmeades and slipped into the forest, to hide in an unfrequented glade. She had to be alone.
The profound transformations of the day were less baffling and incredible once she found herself in the loneliness and solitude of the forest. Life was real and earnest, beautiful and terrible, inexplicable as the blaze of the setting sun, so fiery golden on the rugged, towering Rim. In the depths of the quiet woods she could understand something of simplicity. For her and Clara life had been throbbing and poignant. For the Denmeades life seemed like that of the trees and denizens of the forest.
The sun sank, the birds ceased their plaintive notes, and a dreaming silence pervaded the green world of foliage. Late bees hummed by. The drowsy summer heat began to cool.
Lucy's heart was full of reverent gratitude to whatever had wrought the change in Clara. Love, suffering, the influence of nature, all had combined to burn out the baneful, selfish weakness that had made Clara a victim to circumstances. And these were only other names for God.
How inscrutably had things worked to this happy end! She tried to look backward and understand. But that seemed impossible. Yet she realised how stubbornly, miserably, she had clung to her ideal. If she had only known the reward!
The great solemn forest land was after all to be her home. She would go on with her work among these simple people, grateful that she would be received by them, happy that she could bring good to their lonely homes. The thing she had prayed most for had become a reality. If doubt ever assailed her again, it would be of short duration. She thought of the bee-hunter She would be his wife on the morrow!
Dusk mantled the forest. A faint night wind arose, mournful and sweet. Lucy threaded her way back toward the clearing. And the peace of the wilderness seemed to have permeated her soul. She was just one little atom in a vast world of struggling humans, like a little pine sapling lifting itself among millions of its kind toward the light. But that lifting was the great and the beautiful secret.
THE END
